Film & Television
Forty Years in the Trenches of Human Nature
From Brooklyn’s bandstands to the courtrooms and ranch country of the American West—a life shaped by reinvention and the people encountered along the way.
Before Robert J. DiLorenzo became a trial lawyer, he was a professional drummer searching for his future. Before he built a ranch in Wyoming, he was a Brooklyn boy saving for a horse.
Notes from a Grunt Lawyer – In the Trenches brings together the experiences that shaped him and the legal career that brought other people’s lives into his own. His personal journey and the stories encountered along the way offer material for feature film, limited series, or episodic television, with the adaptation approach left open.
Robert’s Journey
Before the courtroom, there was the bandstand.
Robert grew up in a working-class Italian-Sicilian family in South Brooklyn. His imagination also reached westward. Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne were childhood influences; The Searchers made a lasting impression. At fifteen, he bought a horse with earnings from small jobs. Someday, he wanted horses and a small ranch.
Music offered an immediate livelihood. While still a teenager, Robert played drums professionally, performing with his band six nights a week at Harlow’s in Manhattan. Their work included backing Chuck Berry.
At twenty-three, he moved to San Francisco to pursue music, playing with jazz musicians on Union Street. There, a conversation with an older, college-educated bass player opened another possibility. The musician was considering law school. Robert began looking differently at the working musicians around him—and at where he might find himself ten or fifteen years later.
The conversation became a catalyst toward education and, eventually, law. That change took determination. Financial hardship had left Robert living briefly out of his Volkswagen. He worked to support himself, pursued college, and began to believe he could become a lawyer. Dyslexia and disappointing admissions-test results complicated the path, but he persisted.
Law school in San Diego brought practical training with an experienced criminal lawyer. After earning his J.D., Robert returned to the Bay Area to complete his bar requirements and enter practice. He chose litigation and the independence of working for himself.
The country life he had imagined as a boy remained a pull. A court appearance in Nevada City introduced him to a place where he wanted to live. Eventually, he established a horse property in Nevada County, balancing legal work with riding and ranch chores. Sometimes colleagues brushed alfalfa from his jacket before court.
A shared love of horses became an important part of his relationship with Diana. Wyoming offered a further expression of that life: open country, working ranches, cattle work, and friendships with cowboys. As professional burnout deepened, their trips there with their horses became increasingly difficult to leave behind.
They eventually moved, purchasing thirty-seven acres and building a home and small horse ranch. Brandings, roundups, and a new community became part of their lives.
The move to Wyoming in 2004 was intended as a departure from the life Robert had known, but not everything stayed behind. As he and Diana settled into ranch life and built their house, he continued completing California matters and retained his California license.
After stepping away from regular day-to-day practice, he discovered how deeply being a lawyer had become part of his identity. He had spent decades becoming one, and without that daily work he no longer felt quite like himself.
Robert studied Wyoming law and statutes, passed the Wyoming bar examination, and became a Wyoming lawyer in 2007. This marked the beginning of the Wyoming chapter of his legal career.
The World of Grunt Lawyer
People bring their whole lives into a legal dispute.
A frightened widower. A veteran’s wife asking for help again. A client whose family rejects the resolution his lawyer has worked to secure.
Across California and Wyoming, Robert encounters the pressures beneath the paperwork: grief, pride, money, loyalty, shame, and the need to be believed. His clients can be vulnerable, difficult, funny, or self-defeating—sometimes within the same conversation.
The work unfolds in jail interviews, offices, courthouse corridors, negotiations, and trials. Clients return. Earlier choices carry consequences. A legal result can change a life without resolving everything that brought someone through the door.
Robert meets those situations with persistence and meticulous preparation. He wants the facts and law at hand when a question comes from the bench or opposing counsel. Professional disagreements can be followed by friendly conversation outside court. Over the years, the work tests both his judgment and his ability to leave a client’s troubles behind at the end of the day.
Selected Stories
Five stories from a working life
The Scared Old Widower — Chapter 4
In his first jury trial, Robert enters an imposing San Francisco courtroom to defend a recently widowed man facing formidable evidence in a drunk-driving case. An assured patrol officer commands the witness stand. A law-school class arrives to observe. Robert has prepared witnesses and expert testimony, but now takes a calculated risk: he asks the officer to demonstrate the very sobriety test his client failed. For the man at the defense table, his future is at stake; for Robert, this is an encounter that will shape his sense of himself as a trial lawyer.
“The Flying Douche” — from Chapter 10
A private mishap becomes an emergency-room visit on April Fools’ Day. A distressed couple struggles to convince the staff that their predicament is real. Later, Robert faces a different challenge: explaining the resulting products-liability claim before a courtroom full of fellow lawyers while keeping his professional composure.
State vs. ’Nam Vet, Parts One and Two — Chapters 11 and 16
A combat veteran’s wife retains Robert after her husband fires a rifle inside a sheriff’s office. Years later, she returns: the same man now faces a homicide charge. Across two connected cases, wartime trauma, public scrutiny, and competing accounts of danger test a relationship that continues long after the first proceeding ends.
The Fatal Attraction Case — Chapter 13
A secret affair between members of prominent neighboring families ends in betrayal and an armed confrontation. As private events become public testimony, Robert must navigate family influence, intimate disclosures, and a client whose emotional injuries remain inseparable from the case.
The Russian Connection — Chapter 22
A lawyer entrusted with an inheritance has diverted its funds. Robert works to recover the loss, but a possible settlement creates another conflict within his client’s family. The question becomes what they are prepared to risk in pursuit of more.
The Courthouse World
The people Robert will see again tomorrow.
Clerks keep the work moving. Bailiffs watch the room—and occasionally devise practical jokes. Judges bring distinct temperaments to the bench. Opposing lawyers become familiar faces across years of cases.
Robert finds his briefcase handcuffed to a stairwell. A sign appears on his vehicle announcing, “Will Sue for Food.” A clerk’s timely call catches an embarrassing filing mistake.
These relationships accumulate alongside the cases. Familiarity can ease a difficult morning, sharpen a disagreement, or turn a newcomer into someone who belongs. Humor offers relief from work that follows people home.
The courthouse is a continuing community, and Robert’s place within it changes as the new lawyer becomes the experienced practitioner.
Hear the Storytelling
From Chapter 13 — “The Fatal Attraction Case”
Tap play to hear a free excerpt from the audiobook.
Robert J. DiLorenzo
Robert J. DiLorenzo’s path to more than forty years in legal practice began with professional music and a move from Brooklyn to San Francisco. A growing desire for another future led him through education, law school, and an independent practice handling criminal defense, civil litigation, and family disputes.
His childhood ambition to own horses and live in the country continued alongside that career, taking shape in California and later in Wyoming with his wife, Diana. Notes from a Grunt Lawyer – In the Trenches connects those changes through the clients, relationships, and decisions that marked his working life.
Selected Praise
“Solid, hard-hitting review of the legal profession. Succinct recollections of a life spent guarding a unique trust in society and our Constitution. This is a must-read for everyone in the legal profession – trust me, they need it.”
— Cdr. Kirk S. Lippold, USN (Ret)
“Rob skillfully shares case-stories that reveal truths about the justice system--the lawyers, the clients, the judges, the police, the process--the wisdom and pearls he has collected over his well-heeled career passed to us--Truly brilliant and downright fun to read--you will laugh and gain rare insights from a master grunt lawyer in the trenches.”
— Pamela J. Luna, DrPH, MST
Excerpt from her endorsement
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