Turow to visit as Kovler Fellow

Scott Turow, a Chicago attorney and author of such legal thrillers as Presumed Innocent, will speak on the public's perception of lawyers during his daylong visit to the University as a Marjorie Kovler Visiting Fellow on Thursday, Jan. 15. The lecture, entitled "The Mystery of the Missing Mason -- Perry, That Is," will be held at 12:15 p.m. in the Law School Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

While at the University, Turow also will attend an undergraduate class and meet informally with College students interested in creative writing and the law.

Turow is the author of four best-selling books: Presumed Innocent (1987), which was made into a motion picture; Burden of Proof (1990), which was made into an ABC-TV miniseries; Pleading Guilty (1993); and The Laws of Our Fathers (1996). His books have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

A partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, Turow centers his practice on white-collar criminal litigation. In 1988, he acted as special prosecutor in the investigation and disciplinary proceedings resulting from allegations of police corruption in Oak Park, Ill. In 1995, acting pro bono, he successfully urged the Illinois Appellate Court to reverse the murder conviction of Alejandro Hernandez and to grant Hernandez a fourth trial. After nearly 12 years in prison, Hernandez was freed following the acquittal of his co-defendant, Rolando Cruz.

From 1978 to 1986, while he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Turow was lead government counsel in a number of the trials connected to Operation Greylord, a federal investigation of corruption in the Illinois judiciary.

A Chicago native, Turow graduated from Amherst College in 1970 and received an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which he attended until 1972. He then taught creative writing at Stanford until 1975, when he entered law school at Harvard. During law school he wrote and published his first work, One L, a memoir of his experiences as a first-year law student.

The Marjorie Kovler Visiting Fellows program is designed to encourage interaction between students at the University and prominent individuals in the arts and public affairs. Past fellows include Robert Redford, Betty Friedan, Kurt Vonnegut and Rep. Patricia Schroeder.