Shon Hopwood's "Law Man"

Shon Hopwood is a law school student at the University of Washington School of Law who, prior to law school, served over ten years in federal prison for a string of bank robberies he committed as a young adult. While in prison, he learned the law and he wrote legal briefs for other prisoners, two of which were granted by the U.S. Supreme Court—the equivalent of winning the legal lottery. Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption is the story of his prison term, legal successes, and the romance of his now wife while he was still incarcerated.

Hopwood applied the “Page 99 Test” to Law Man and reported the following:

Page 99 was one of the hardest pages to write out of 305-page memoir. It was hard to write because on that page I am telling the story of how my best friend and I robbed a bank. The guilt from that one act still bothers me today. I don’t like writing about it, I don’t like talking about it.

But it is a centerpiece of the story. Because you cannot know where I am now if you don’t know where I was 15 years ago.

Some say the day I was sentenced to over 12 years in federal prison was the low point—my rock bottom.

I think the bank robbery was the low point because it illustrates just how desperate and lost I truly was at the time.

Learn more about Law Man at Shon Hopwood's website, blog, and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Law Man.

--Marshal Zeringue