Janice Law

Janice Law is the 2011 founder of American Women Writers National Museum, a 501(c)(3) public charity in Washington, D.C., honoring America's premier women writers, historical and contemporary. The Secrets of a Client Are Inviolate, Law's fiction short story about the anomalous night lights in Marfa, Texas, was an Honorable Mention in the 2011 statewide Write Stuff short story competition sponsored by the Texas Bar Journal. Law is the author of 2009 fiction thriller Wicked Good Secrets, and...See more

Janice Law is the 2011 founder of American Women Writers National Museum, a 501(c)(3) public charity in Washington, D.C., honoring America's premier women writers, historical and contemporary. The Secrets of a Client Are Inviolate, Law's fiction short story about the anomalous night lights in Marfa, Texas, was an Honorable Mention in the 2011 statewide Write Stuff short story competition sponsored by the Texas Bar Journal. Law is the author of 2009 fiction thriller Wicked Good Secrets, and childrens' 2008 historical fiction Capitol Cat & Watch Dog Unite Lady Freedoms. Her three nonfiction books are: Strangers in Blood: Distanced Lives (2007), Yield: A Judge's Fir$t-Year Diary (2006) and Sex Appealed: Was the U.S. Supreme Court Fooled? (2005). Yield was a finalist in the nonfiction category of Texas' prestigious Violet Crown Award (now the Texas Book Award) of the Texas Writers' League for work published in 2006. The finalist recognition was presented to Janice Law in a ceremony in the state capitol building in Austin in 2007, as part of the annual Texas Book Festival. Yield also received an Honorable Mention in the 2007 national writing competition sponsored by Public Safety Writers, a literary group of former police officers, firefighters, and EMS. The Texas Bar selected Capitol Cat & Watch Dog for the Bar's statewide Law-Related Education program for Texas Teachers. Law addressed a statewide teachers conference in Austin. Two of her books have been featured on C-Span2 BOOK TV and at major national book festivals where Law was a stage-featured author and spoke on literary panels. The National Press Club successively selected three of her books for their annual Book Fair & Author Night gala- one of Washington, D.C.'s major literary events. When Law graduated in 1963 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a B.A. in English and journalism, she was the second person in all generations on both sides of her family to receive an undergraduate college degree. For the next fourteen years, she worked as a reporter for various newspapers across the United States while her first husband, Robert, served as a United States Air Force officer. Some of her journalistic work is included in Professional Newsriting by Dr. Hiley Ward (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1985), The Mass Media, 2nd edition, by Dr. William L. Rivers (Harper & Row, 1975), and The Effete Conspiracy and Other Crimes by the Press by Ben H. Bagdikian (Harper & Row, 1972). In 1976, at age 36, she entered Nova Law School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, working the night police desk as a reporter at the Fort Lauderdale News to support herself during her first year of law school, until she could get student loans. When she received her J.D. degree in 1979, she was the first person in her family to earn a professional degree. Law worked as a state prosecutor in Bartow and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, until 1985 when she moved back to Houston, Texas. She served as staff attorney for the federal judges in the Southern District of Texas from 1985-1988. From 1988 she worked in the litigation section of the City of Houston legal department as an Assistant City Attorney. In 1990, she moved to McAllen, Texas, on the Texas-Mexico border, to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney. From 1991-1998 she worked in Houston as a criminal defense attorney for the indigent, until appointed by the mayor as an Associate Municipal Judge for the City of Houston. In 1998, she was elected to a four-year term as judge in Harris County (Houston) Texas County Criminal Court No. 5. She now serves as a visiting judge for Texas judges who are vacationing, ill, or absent. She may be contacted at JudgeJaniceLaw@yahoo.com. Her website is www... See less