Robert Dugoni has practiced as a civil litigator in San Francisco and Seattle for seventeen years. In 1999 he left his law practice to write full time. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times before obtaining his doctorate of jurisprudence from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. A two-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest, he lives with his wife and two children in the Pacific Northwest.