“I learned to write novels in law school,” author Lisa Scottoline C’77, L’81 explains. “I thought writing legal briefs was dramatic. The way you approach a problem is the same in a brief and a novel. You have to convince the reader. I loved it!”

Students in the Legal Writing courses may take issue with her nostalgic view, but Scottoline is in every way effervescent about her days at Penn training in the ways of the law.

Today she is embarking on the promotional tour for her eighth novel, a legal thriller called “The Vendetta Defense,” and writing her ninth. What does she write about? Take this promotional blurb about “The Vendetta Defense” as an example:

Anthony Lucia, an old Italian pigeon keeper known to his South Philly neighbors as “Pigeon Tony,” doesn’t try to hide the fact that he killed lifelong enemy Angelo Coluzzi, nor is he sorry that he’s dead. He justifies the killing because he was merely carrying out a vendetta begun more than 50 years ago in Italy, a blood feud that brought great tragedy to Pigeon Tony’s life. But is murder ever justified? That is what ace lawyer, Judy Carrier, an associate of the Philly law firm Rosato & Associates, must decide for herself, before she can launch a defense in what becomes the most challenging case of her career.

As Scottoline admits through laughter, “We write what we know about, right? I write about lawyers and crime and courts in Philadelphia from the point of view of female Italian American lawyers in Philadelphia!”

When she entered Penn as an undergraduate, the Philadelphia native was a big fan of novelist Phillip Roth who was on faculty in the English Department. “I wanted to stay in Philadelphia and I knew Penn had a good English Department. But, money was an issue. Dean Freedman (James Freedman, Law School Dean) was the Ombudsman then. I went to him saying I had to finish my degree in three years. This wasn’t done. But he said ‘okay.’ He extended a hand to me. There are so many ‘no’s in the world, it’s wonderful when someone says ‘yes.’”

Despite the demands of her accelerated curriculum Scottoline worked two jobs and was on the varsity teams for lacrosse, field hockey, and rowing. This pace and schedule suited her temperament well then, as it does now, and foreshadowed how her life would play out so far. She graduated magna cum laude from the College at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977 earning a B.A. in English with a concentration in the contemporary American novel.

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