Gillette Judge Paul Phillips — aka author James Chandler — has written 8 best-selling legal thrillers inspired by his life experiences. He just signed a deal with a major Hollywood producer with the goal of turning his book “Misjudged” into a 6 to 8-part docuseries.
GILLETTE – It’s a good day, Judge Paul Phillips said, raising his mug of coffee briefly before sinking down into a brown, vinyl armchair at Starbucks in south Gillette. It was Veterans Day, and Phillips was happy to be awarded free coffee for his two decades of service in the U.S. Army.
That day, Phillips was casual in a button-down shirt and jeans, blending in with the crowd of casually dressed patrons sipping lattes with heads bent over iPhones and computers. It’s a rare day off for Phillips, who would normally be among the small subset in court attire in a decidedly working-class town that favors Carhartts and baseball caps.
Being a circuit court judge by day is just one facet of his life, Phillips noted. Along with being an avid outdoorsman and veteran, he’s also a best-selling legal thriller writer who goes by the pen name James Chandler.
The pseudonym, he explained, creates a clear boundary from his day job.
Even the people who work for him don’t necessarily know about his alter-ego. One woman ran back into his office after about a year on the job to tell him that he was James Chandler.
“She had seen an ad for one of my books and recognized me,” he said. “That told me I was doing a good job keeping my writing hobby separate from my work.”
Typically, Phillips — as Chandler — would be busy writing before he donned his black robe, but he’s taking a quick breather after shipping off his eighth book, “Reasonable Suspicion,” to his editor. This marks the final installment – for now – in his popular Sam Johnstone legal thriller series, which perennially ranks in the top 100 best-sellers on Amazon as well as the Wall Street Journal lists.
The writing break is brief because he’s also finishing up his third book in the Smith and Bauer four-book series that he co-writes with Laura Snider, a former prosecutor and writer living in Iowa. In this series, Snider does the heavy lifting by coming up with the first draft and plotline, Phillips explained, which he then fleshes out with the fine details.
It’s a great symbiotic working relationship, he said, because he doesn’t have to think up the plotlines.
“She writes by the seat of her pants, and her part of writing is writing the first draft,” he said. “My favorite part is fleshing out characters, refining and polishing sentence and paragraph structure. We could never switch roles.”
With his contractual obligations nearly wrapped up with both book series, Phillips has a shopping agreement with a major Hollywood producer to turn his first book “Misjudged,” which was published in 2021, into a six- to eight-part streaming series.
“Seeing it happen is still a long shot,” Phillips said, but the odds improved recently when the producer brought on board a well-known showrunner signed on to the project.
The showrunner completes the script for a pilot episode and puts the team together, including lead and minor characters and other technicians and staff necessary to produce a television series. Then he works with the producer to market the package to network television studios and streaming platforms.
Phillips is duty-bound not to spill the guy’s name or any of the details, only to say that he has an impressive track record with several blockbusters under his belt.
Still, given the tortoise-like speed of show business, which Phillips’ friend compares to “swimming in peanut butter,” it will likely be a while before he knows anything.
“The odds are definitely not in my favor, but I think we’ve gone from several-million-to-one to something much less than that,” he said. “People in the business are spending a lot of time on it.”
As for who he envisions playing his lovable but fatally flawed protagonist? The jury is still out on that.
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