Epilogue

This book would not exist without the people who let me tell their stories.

They trusted Michael, me and our team during investigations, sentencing hearings, prison terms and the years that followed. They let us hear conversations that embarrassed them. They spoke about money, rationalizations, damaged marriages, frightened children and the things they wished they had done differently.

Some invited us into their homes. Others called from prison. Their spouses told us what the case required from the person who had not committed the crime but still had to explain it to the children, pay the bills and remain in the community after everyone had read the press release.

I am thankful to them.

White Collar Advice may have entered their lives because of a government investigation. What came next was more personal: their parents, children, businesses, fears and plans for the years after prison. They trusted us at a time when trust was hard to give.

I benefited too. Their questions forced me to examine answers I had repeated for years. Their persistence reminded me why Michael pushed me to begin writing in prison.

Sharing these stories forces me to ask whether my conduct resembles the advice I give other people.

I hope this book helps our community as much as it has helped me.

This was my attempt to connect philosophy to subjects that rarely include it: federal investigations, guilty pleas, sentencing, prison, damaged reputations and returning home.

Philosophy was not created merely to give us quotations to place beneath photographs. People used it to examine how they wanted to live, what they valued and whether they lived that way once it got hard.

That is why Ovid belonged in a doctor’s office, Boethius belonged in a conversation about money and status, and Sisyphus belonged inside a federal prison.

I can give advice I believe and still fail to follow it. That is its own kind of rationalizing.

I expect I will continue reconsidering some of what I wrote here. Experience may expose an argument I made too confidently. A client may ask a question I cannot answer. My children may tell me I am explaining something long after they understood it.

I am still learning.

I’m not done. Some of what comes next will be books and long videos. Much of it will come through the hundreds of Shorts I have filmed, usually after a good or bad call, a conversation with Michael, something my children said or a mistake that reminded me of one I made years earlier.

Those Shorts will be my next book.

That book will get into why I began filming, what happened before I pressed record and whether I still agree with what I said. It will preserve the mistakes, contradictions and times I needed 87 attempts to communicate one point in less than three minutes.

I am writing it for a selfish reason.

Creating helps me.

If something I create also helps someone handle an investigation better, talk to their child, get ready for prison or figure out life after coming home, good.

Thank you for trusting me with these stories and for reading After the Fall.