Biography[edit]

Friedman received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1948 and his J.D. and LL.M from the University of Chicago Law School (where he was on the staff of the University of Chicago Law Review) in 1951 and 1953, respectively. Admitted to the bar in Illinois in 1951, he was associated with the firm of D'Ancona, Pflaum, Wyatt, and Riskind in Chicago from 1955 to 1957. At the time, his practice area was trusts and estates. Friedman taught at Saint Louis University School of Law as Assistant Professor of Law (1957–60) and as Associate Professor of Law (1960–61). He then moved to the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was Associate Professor of Law (1961–65) and then Professor of Law (1965–68). Friedman was a Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School from 1966 to 1967 and moved to Stanford in 1968. He holds courtesy appointments with Stanford's department of history and political science.[1]


Friedman is the recipient of six honorary law degrees: LL.D. degrees from the University of Puget Sound Law School (1977), John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York (1989), University of Lund (Sweden) (1993), John Marshall Law School (1995), and University of Macerata (Italy) (1998), and a D.Juris. from the University of Milan (Italy) (2006).[1] Friedman is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[1] He has been the President of Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law[1].


In 2007, Brian Leiter found that Friedman was the most-cited law professor in the field of legal history, with 1890 citations between 2000 and 2007.[2] Friedman is also a fiction writer. He has published at least eight mystery novels, generally murder mysteries involving a San Mateo attorney named Frank May. Friedman publishes his fiction writing as "Lawrence Friedman" and his nonfiction writing as "Lawrence M. Friedman."

The Big Trial: Law As Public Spectacle, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015.

Inside the Castle: Law and the Family in 20th Century America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011 (co-authored with Joanna L. Grossman).

Guarding Life's Dark Secret: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Propriety, and Privacy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

(3rd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. 2005. ISBN 9780684869889.

A History of American Law

American Law in the 20th Century, New Haven: , 2002

Yale University Press

The Horizontal Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Crime and Punishment in American History, New York: Basic Books, 1993.

The Legal System: A Social Science Perspective, New York: , 1975.[1]

Russell Sage Foundation

Friedman has published thirty-four books of nonfiction. Among his most significant works are:


Selected titles among his eight novels:

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Lawrence M. Friedman