The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk and Other Tales of Legal Madness.

by Joseph Matthews

The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk and Other Tales of Legal Madness is a collection of true tales from trial lawyer Joseph Matthews. These stories are closely observed portraits of courtroom lawyers, their cases, and the humans inside them. Some stories focus on their hectic, highstressed, and often barely sane lives, while others are sharp, polemical attacks on cynical and celebrity lawyers, and on the very system itself.

From a startling inside look at the work of a besieged public defender to the audacious tale of how Matthews smuggles an entire gourmet dinner -- complete with lemon-dill sauce hidden in a fountain pen -- to a friend in jail, these stories capture the imagination and challenge of the notion of a "just" judicial system.

The author is a former public defender and private practice trial lawyer who graduated in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has also taught.

The...