Good trial lawyers, it is said, are good storytellers. Class Day speaker Scott Turow is a case in point. An accomplished Chicago prosecutor, Turow penned bestsellers Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof.

And the secret to it all was not getting trainsick on the way to work.

Turow, 43, wrote his critically acclaimed murder mystery Presumed Innocent during his morning commute to downtown Chicago where he worked as U.S. attorney for eight years.

Presumed Innocent sold 712,000 copies in hardcover and 4.3 million copies in paperback. It spent 44 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, including eight weeks in first place.

The dramatic narrative of Rusty Sabich, a deputy prosecutor in a large, Midwestern city who is accused of murdering his colleague and former mistress, became the subject of the blockbuster movie directed by Alan Pakula and starring Harrison Ford.

"I didn't set out to write a commercial book," Turow told The New York Times in June 1987, "I wasn't pot-boiling. My literary interests have always been serious, in terms of my training, my orientation."

After the success of Presumed Innocent, Turow was able to devote more time to his literary career, reducing his caseload by one half.

Turow's most recent claim to fame is Burden of Proof which, landing in bookstores in the summer of 1990, sold for a record-breaking $3.2 million in paperback rights.

The story centers around Alejandro Stern, the defense attorney from Presumed Innocent who faces his wife's mysterious suicide and his brother-in-law's duplicity.

"I was widely afraid of self-imitation when I began the second book," said Turow to Time magazine. "I'm proud of Burden of Proof, particularly the portrait of Sandy Stern and his complicated involvements in family life."

In an interview with The Crimson last week, Turow said that although the characters and scenes in his novels are completely fictional, "they are definitely related to my life, they're my observations."

And other lawyers familiar with Turow's work say that his many years as a member of the bar render his novels authentic.

"One of the advantages of being a talented lawyer is he's dead in the money in terms of realism," says Howard Pearl, a 1980 Law School graduate who worked with Turow at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago. "Legally and psychologically it [Presumed Innocent] has great insight."

In his novels, Turow explores the moral questions that lawyers confront in their daily practice. In fact, the books dramatize a dilemma which Turow says faces all practicing attorneys: the difference between "doing well and doing good."

"The client's ends are going to dominate, and the ability to do good is sometimes limited." Turow says. "For me, no less than any other lawyer, it's a daily dilemma."