LISA SCOTTOLINE

Lisa Scottoline is a New York Times best-selling author of 12 novels and a former trial lawyer. Her most recent books are Daddy's Girl and Dirty Blonde. Scottoline graduated magna cum laude in three years from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in English. She then graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981, where she served as an Associate Editor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review and won the Henry Loughlin Prize for legal ethics.

Scottoline began her legal career with a clerkship for President Judge Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr. of the Pennsylvania Superior Court. When the clerkship ended, she joined Dechert, Price & Rhoads in Philadelphia as an associate. In 1986, she left the firm to raise her newborn daughter and began writing legal fiction part-time. In 1994, Scottoline re-entered the legal world as an administrative law clerk to Chief Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, while beginning a new career as a fiction author, with the publication of her new novel.

Scottoline’s writing career began with Everywhere That Mary Went, which became a best-seller and was nominated for the Edgar Award, the most prestigious award given in crime fiction, awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Her second novel, Final Appeal, was also nominated and received the Edgar Award. Since then she has written 10 more legal suspense novels, all of which have appeared on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Publisher’s Weekly.

Scottoline has received many awards and honors for her contributions to law and the arts including an honorary Doctorate of Law from West Chester University, an Alumni Certificate of Merit from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the Paving the Way Award from the University of Pennsylvania Women in Business, and a Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University. She has also been awarded as a Fun Fearless Female by Cosmopolitan magazine for embodying independent women in the creative arts and il Leone Di San Marco Award by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee of New York for promoting positive images of Italian-Americans. Scottoline currently serves as a board member for Mystery Writers of America, the National Italian American Foundation, and Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.

She has lectured at law schools and bar associations on issues of legal ethics. Scottoline was also a contributing editor to Justice magazine and teaches a course entitled “Justice and Fiction” at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

A lifelong Philadelphian, Scottoline still lives in the Philadelphia area and enjoys writing about her hometown.