1. Home
2. Web First
3. Writing novels helps this employment lawyer…

Writing novels helps this employment lawyer avoid burnout

By Anna Stolley Persky

July 9, 2024, 9:42 am CDT

Brooke Tabshouri was a few years into her legal career when she experienced what she describes as “bad burnout.” She learned through therapy and mindfulness classes that she needed to do something creative when she wasn’t being a lawyer or caring for her two children.

“I knew that the creative thing would be writing,” she says. “I always wrote as a child. It’s as natural to me as breathing.”

To make sure she had a more flexible schedule, Tabshouri switched law firms, landing at Duane Morris, which allowed her to work as a special counsel with an 80% schedule. She practices employment law.

Tabshouri is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and she incorporates her heritage into her writing. She worked on several novels before hitting success with The Peacekeeper, a speculative murder mystery that takes place in an alternate world in which North America was never colonized. The plot focuses on a broken Ojibwe detective who solves two murders and, in the process, rediscovers his family and better understands himself.

“The story occurred to me on a commute, and then I had to get it out of my brain,” says Tabshouri, who practices out of Duane Morris’ San Diego office.

She ended up writing the first draft of The Peacekeeper while on maternity leave.

Published in 2022 by 47North, The Peacekeeper won the 2022 Sidewise Award for Best Long-Form Alternate History.

Tabshouri writes under the pen name B.L. Blanchard—her first and middle initials and her maiden name—because she wanted to keep her author and lawyer lives separate. She published a second novel, The Mother, which is a companion to her first, in 2023. The second book is about an alternate world in which the British Empire never existed. She is working on a third book.

“I really like worldbuilding, and you can do so much of that in speculative fiction. You can start from a place in history, and then think about at what point it could have turned into something else,” says Tabshouri, who double-majored in English and international relations at the University of California at Davis. She also was a part of the school’s inaugural undergraduate Creative Writing Honors Program.

After working for the California State Auditor for a few years, she enrolled at the Boston University School of Law, where she was a writing fellow. Tabshouri spent her 3L year at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she was a visiting student, and graduated from Boston Law in 2011.

During her third year of law school, Tabshouri externed for California Court of Appeals Justice Richard D. Huffman. She continued working with him after she graduated until she moved on to Fisher Phillips in 2012. In 2017, Tabshouri switched to Duane Morris, where she counsels and advises clients in employment and labor law issues.

After college, Tabshouri needed to find a career in which she knew she could support herself, which was why she didn’t go directly into creative writing. Also, she enjoys the practice of law and says her firm excels at encouraging its employees to maintain a work-life balance.

Finding time to write is a challenge, she says, but crucial to her motivation and peace of mind.

“I have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else, but I have told myself if I don’t write what I want to write, it just won’t get written. It means I don’t do other things, like, I haven’t really watched television in five years except for children’s TV,” Tabshouri says.