Meet the Author

Margaret Klaw

Official

Margaret Klaw is a writer, a lawyer, and a founding partner of BKW Family Law, an all-women law firm in Philadelphia. Named a Preeminent Woman Lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell, she has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America and designated a Pennsylvania “Super Lawyer” in the area of family law. Starting with day-in-the-life vignettes about practicing family law published in her own blog and then HuffPost, she has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, and Salon and is the author of Keeping it Civil: The Case of the Pre-Nup and the Porsche & Other True Accounts from the Files of a Family Lawyer (Algonquin Books, 2013). Every Other Weekend is her first work of fiction.

Personal

I grew up in New York City, the youngest of four sisters, and made my way to law school after dropping out of conservatory (violin) after two miserable years, studying political theory, and working as a waitress, a house painter, an office temp, and a counselor at a battered women’s shelter. While at the shelter, I had the opportunity to go to court as an advocate for the residents. The first time I stood up and spoke in a courtroom, I was hooked. Going to law school was one of the best decisions of my life, and I’ve been happily practicing family law for what seems like a lifetime. 

I always loved writing as a part of my job, and wanted to capture for others what I saw and felt and thought during my daily life as a family lawyer. When my younger daughter left home to go to college I finally found time to do that, and have been writing ever since. 

Despite my career as a divorce lawyer (or perhaps because of it) I am still happily married to a man I met when I was seventeen. He is an architect and a musician, and we have raised two wonderful daughters and now have a grandson as well. I spend as much time as possible with all of them and am intimately familiar with the stretch of I-95 between Brooklyn and Baltimore.