John Grisham

Grisham opened his Mississippi law practice in 1981 and wrote fiction while working as an attorney and legislator. A trial helped prompt A Time to Kill, published in 1989, before The Firm made writing a commercially sustainable career. The practical connection is unusually direct: professional knowledge supplied procedures, conflicts and an ear for how people argue. The years of overlap matter more than imagining that the first published book immediately replaced legal work.