Format: 6 x 9 paperback
Release Date: February 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-57869-047-3
eBook: 978-1-57869-050-3
LCCN: 2020922572

Booksellers and Libraries: Order Here.

SYNOPSIS

This book is about a unique time in Vermont culture when it was ready for change and new people to bring it about. A Lawyer’s Life to Live is a story about how laws impact how we live, and how one man grappled with living a moral life while practicing law.

Kim Cheney came to Vermont at a time when the US Supreme Court ordered reapportionment of the legislature, ended small town dominance, and loosed a flurry of excitement to bring the State into the progressive world. As the first lawyer ever assigned to the Education Department, Cheney replaced ancient laws with a system of checks and balances for running the schools. Once elected Washington County’s State’s Attorney, he handled crimes from traffic tickets to multiple murder and other serious crimes, and as State Attorney General, tackled many issues like women’s rights, public access to governmental documents, and protecting Lake Champlain by suing New York State in the US Supreme Court. Later, in private practice, Cheney helped create laws to protect children in child custody decisions and revised laws governing adoption so that birth parents and adoptees could find each other. In this memoir of a legal life, Cheney shows us how a lawyer can help pave a path to live peacefully with each other.

Praise

“If Atticus Finch had written a memoir of his complete life as a country lawyer, I believe it would have read much like A Lawyer’s Life to Live. Kim Cheney’s memoir is an honest account, sometimes painfully honest, of his personal and professional life. But as one traverses the different stages of his life, you cannot help but recall and reflect on similar stages in your own life; a blessing in disguise. It is a well written, good read. It is a good story about a good man.”

–M. Jerome Diamond, former Windsor County State’s Attorney and Vermont Attorney General (1975-1981)

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“A vivid portrait of personal and professional challenges by a lawyer whose gifts made his purposeful life in the law meaningful for himself and those he represented, and Vermont.”

—Jeff Amestoy, former Vermont Attorney General (1985-1997), Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court (1997-2004), and author of Slavish Shore: The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana Jr.

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“As I read Cheney’s memoir I found an engaging, first-hand account of the history of Vermont’s local government and law enforcement. In my career as a teacher, I encountered many young people wondering who they would be and how they could make a difference in the world. Middle school and high school students might enjoy reading how one Vermont lawyer could begin a position with no experience and make a difference for others. This book may inspire some young people to expand their thinking and consider a career in the law.”

–Tina Muncy, School Reform National Facilitator

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“Over the past half-century, Kim Cheney has been known in Vermont as one of the smartest and most influential lawyers in the state. Now we know from his autobiography that he is also one of the wisest. He has written a fascinating and introspective memoir of his public life (with humble and poignant glimpses into his private life. As a private practitioner his heart and mind were always focused on necessary reform of our laws and improvement of the public weal. Most notable are Cheney’s accounts of corruption within the state’s police forces and his efforts to clean it up.”

—Bernie Lambek, Montpelier, Vermont lawyer and author of Uncivil Liberties: A Novel

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“Kim Cheney’s memoir is an engaging story by itself and also familiar and illuminating to this former prosecutor. Personal and poignant, the memoir reveals how a child of relative comfort and privilege grows up to dedicate his life to public service and the pursuit of justice. With occasional humorous anecdotes and insights, Cheney captures the nuance and human complexities of the law. His story is also, importantly, one that will appeal to young people of any calling, seeking a career by taking on new challenges with no idea how to do a job, working hard to learn it, and then doing it very well. This is a great read for anyone interested in the evolution of the legal community in Vermont.”

–Robert Sand, former Windsor County State’s Attorney and founding director of Vermont Law School Center for Justice Reform

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“Cheney’s book is an important reminder of how things can go wrong. The author is as tough on himself as he is on other players who were far more involved in that affair. That’s a quality that is rare and praiseworthy in the literature of public life.”   

—Hamilton E. Davis, author of Mocking Justice: America’s Biggest Drug Scandal

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“Memoirs of important Vermonters are rare, but what there is rarely fails to prick our imaginations and appreciation for the lives they led. Kim Cheney’s A Lawyer’s Life to Live is an intimate account of this former Vermont Attorney General’s life and career in the law. It illuminates a period of our history that is just over the horizon of memory with wit and candor, including a new perspective on the Paul Lawrence scandal of the mid-1970s where a rogue law enforcement officer falsified drug arrests in dozens of cases. There should be a law that requires retired officials to write their stories to preserve them. Kim Cheney’s book now joins the memoirs of Deane Davis, Peter Langrock, and Lucius Chittenden in the pantheon of classic works on the history of Vermont and its laws.”

—Paul Gilles, author of The Law of the Hills: A Judicial History of Vermont

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“Kim Cheney’s memoir traces his journey from becoming a lawyer in Vermont to becoming a one-term Attorney General in 1972. He includes observations of both his successes and failures in his personal and public life. The book can be of interest to those who wish to learn more about the important Vermont cases which made headlines in the 70s. It adds an interesting perspective to the history of that time.”

 —Madeleine M. Kunin, Governor of Vermont (1985-1991) and author of Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties

IN THE NEWS

Storycomic Podcast Episode 88, June 25, 2021: Kimberly Cheney, Author & Former Attorney General. Listen here or watch the video below.

Burlington Free Press, May 26, 2021: 38 Vermont books to meet all your summer reading needs

Deerfield Valley News, April 13, 2021: Working Hard at Work Worth Doing by Laura Stevenson.

The Mountain Times, February 17, 2021: Former Vermont Attorney General publishes memoir.

NewPages.com, February 19, 2021: Moral Quandaries, Deal-Making, and Courtroom Dramas in this Legal Memoir.

MEET KIM

In 1964, Kimberly Cheney, after four years of active duty in the U. S. Navy, graduated from Yale Law School and began work in a law firm in New Haven, Conn. In 1967, with his wife Barbara and two children, Alison and Margreta, the family moved to Montpelier, Vermont, where Cheney began eight years of state government service as counsel to the Department of Education, State’s Attorney of Washington County, and Attorney General during a time of social turmoil, and rapid political change. Cheney has forty three years of private practice law in Montpelier including criminal law, personal injury, and divorce, while serving on several boards and commissions leading to establishment of a functioning Public Employees Labor Relations board, helping author a complete revision of criteria for judges to determine which parent divorcing should have custody of the children, and a revision of state laws pertaining to adoption. His career of public and private practice of law illustrates a professional dedication to creative innovation for public benefit.

Cheney received the Whitney North Seymour Arbitration Medal from the American Arbitration Association in 1985, and he is the author of Labor and Employment Law in Vermont (Butterworth Legal Publishers, 1994). He is now retired.