From just being another lawyer in America, Lia Matera transformed herself into an award-winning novelist. She gained popularity for novels featuring frustrated lawyers Willa Jansson and Laura Di Palma.

Where Lawyers Fear to Tread, her first book, was published in 1986. Lia Matera has since received many honors, including nominations for Shamus, Macavity, Anthony, and Edgar Allan Poe awards.

For all these, Lia Matera has never kept her disdain for working as a lawyer a secret. Having vowed to become an author, she has digressed from private practice since she finished law school.

Lia Matera began writing novels during college. The summer before her senior year, she penned her very first novel, using a rented electric typewriter.

She later graduated with a degree in English and Italian Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Sensing it would be a practical decision, she pursued law school afterwards.

She was accepted at the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where she became the editor-in-chief of the Constitutional Law Quarterly. In her spare summers, she would continue writing novels, ready to drop out in case she sells one.

In 1981, she finished law school and passed her bar exams. Rather than pursue private practice, she joined the faculty of Stanford Law School. Here, she taught moot court and legal research.

Sometime later, Lia Matera gave birth to her son. Still hopeful of getting published, she used the brief respite thereafter to write three novels. One of these became Where Lawyers Fear to Tread.

Describing herself as a “recovering lawyer,” Lia Matera continues to steer clear of practice, even as her books draw extensively from her education. She has written even more novels, namely A Radical Departure, The Smart Money, Hidden Agenda, The Good Fight, Prior Convictions, Hard Bargain, Face Value, Designer Crimes, Last Chants, Star Witness and Havana Twist.