Lawyers | Poets | Poetry

Professor James R. Elkins
College of Law
:: West Virginia University

Poet|Singer|Songwriters

 

  John Perrault

"Country Matters" | Rock Weed Music | 1988/1995 |

"P.L.M. Before You Go" | Rock Weed Recordings | 1997 (with Barbara Londong & Jim MacDougall) |

"Rough Cuts" | Rock Weed Music | 1998 | (with Mike Rodgers) |

John Perrault, The Ballad of Louis Wagner and Other England Stories in Verse (Peter E. Randall, Publisher, 2003) (accompanying CD)

John Perrault is a New Hampshire teacher, folksinger, musician, lawyer, and Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Perrault was raised in Maine and graduated from Providence College in 1965. He received his Masters degree in Political Science from the University of New Hampshire. He taught school for 10 years and then obtained his law degree from Franklin Pierce Law Center. With John Ahlgren, he formed the law partnership of Ahlgren & Perrault in 1982. Perrault has appeared in concerts throughout New England singing his ballads. His music albums include: Thief in the Night (1977), New Hampshire (1981), Tenants in Common (1984), Country Matters (1988), Country Matters (1995), PLM: Before You Go (1997) [Source: Personal communication with John Perrault]

Perrault's poetry has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Commonwealth, Key West Review, and Poet Lore. His first published collection of verse, The Ballad of Louis Wagner: & Other New England Stories in Verse was published in 2003 by Peter E. Randall, Publisher. Perrault's latest collection of poetry, Here Comes the Old Man Now was published by Oyster River Press in 2005.[Source: Ballad of the Barrister & Personal communication with John Perrault]

  Jeff Talmaldge

"Secret Anniversaries" | Bozart Records | 1999 |

"The Spinning of the World" | Bozart Records | 2000 |

"Bad Tattoo" | Bozart Records | 2001 |

"Blissville" | Corazong Records | 2006 |

  Richard Ellers

| "Love Songs, Ballads and Broadsides" | Sharx Records | 2006 |

[Richard Ellers's CD] [Richard Ellers]

  Stephanie Haffner

"sub urban poet: the lawyer songs" | gorgeous giant music/BMI | 2003

Folkpop songstress Stephanie Haffner sings about boys, girls, coffee, anxiety, redevelopment, suburbia, rock-n-roll & all manner of real life, along her guitar work. Haffner started composing songs when she walked the "99 acres" between the Gallup New Mexico school bus stop and home, singing to herself. She started writing songs during a break from studies at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall school of law, and began singing around the San Francisco Bay area. After law school, she moved to Stockton, and began contributing to the Stockton and Sacramento music scenes while holding down her day job as a legal aid lawyer. In 2003 she released the self-produced CD, 'Sub Urban Poet: the Lawyer Songs,' a minimalist, solo, political, acoustic-electric-spoken word follow-up to the acoustic lovelorn pop of her 2001 debut, 'Are You the One?' In 2004, Haffner relocated to Southern California where she dropped out of law practice and singing and took up law school teaching. She has now resumed the practice of law and supervises the housing/consumer unit of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County.

Haffner informs us: "My City (the mayor's song) was written around 2 a.m. while working out the theory of the case in a motion for preliminary injunction for Price v. City of Stockton, a redevelopment suit that resulted in a published opinion at 390 F.2d 1105 (9th Cir. 2004). Hallelujah reflects on the circumstances of the same case--months after winning a preliminary injunction that ordered Stockton to stop using code enforcement as an excuse to shutter residential hotels & displace their residents unless it also gave substantial relocation assistance. Of course, the injunction did not stop all the closures (though it did halt some)--or other run-the-bums-out measures." [Personal communication, Stephanie Haffner, October 7, 2006]

  Susan Cohen

"In Time" | WINDIGOMUSIC.COM | 2009 |

  Bob Noone

"2nd Help of Chicken Soup for the Lawyers's Soul" | LawSongs, Inc | 1999 |

[Bob Noone]

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