I've sat in every chair at this table except yours.
For years I was General Counsel of Greenleaf Book Group, the hybrid publisher behind hundreds of business books, executive memoirs, and bestsellers by founders and leaders. My job was deciding which books the house could safely publish, which manuscripts needed surgery first, and what happened when legal found a problem after the pub date was announced. I've been a guest on Greenleaf's podcast twice, once talking about exactly the kind of manuscript risk review I now offer, back when I was giving the advice away rather than selling it. Both episodes are below; hear the approach for yourself before you ever pay me a dollar.
Here is what that job actually looked like. I decided which books came in the door, which manuscripts needed work before production, and which riskier books could move forward and on what conditions. I know how those decisions get made because I made them.
I also trained our editorial staff to spot potentially problematic content, and advised them directly on how to clear it with releases and permissions or how to rewrite it to mitigate the risk, many times writing the fix myself. And behind all of it sat the contract: the representations and warranties, the indemnification, the limitation of liability. I know how those clauses work from the drafting side, and as a trial lawyer I know how they play out when a claim is real.
I work on everything from the end, back. I look at every manuscript as if I'm presenting it to a judge and jury, then work my way backward to make the odds of winning that moment, if it ever comes, as high as possible. Nobody can guarantee that no one sues or makes a claim, because anyone can claim anything. The goal is to stack every brick we can in your legal wall of defense, so their odds of success go down and yours go up.
I watched authors do the hardest part, write the true thing, and then watched launches freeze, print runs sit in warehouses, and signing tables stand empty while lawyers argued about a paragraph. The authors always described the same feeling. The lawsuit fear was abstract. The embarrassment, the texts from friends asking where the book was, the launch month spent explaining instead of celebrating, that part was immediate and personal.
Before that, I ran legal for a technology company, living inside the commercial contracts, NDAs, and settlement agreements that quietly follow executives around, the same documents that now show up with opinions about what their signers can publish.
Today I run one practice with two divisions, and both work the same body of law. A tort is a civil wrong, an injury one person's conduct inflicts on another that the law remedies with money damages, and tort law is where my whole practice lives. In court, the torts I litigate are personal injury cases, brought for people hurt after somebody got a decision wrong. Defamation, invasion of privacy, false light, and misappropriation belong to that same family, and those are the injuries Muller Media Law works to prevent rather than to litigate. The work is complementary: because I spend my days proving how one person's conduct injured another, I read your manuscript the way the lawyer on the other side would read it. Now I read for what I used to answer for: I flag the risks and show authors the ways through, while the manuscript can still change. One division answers injuries. The other works to prevent them. Seeing the whole board is the point.
The publishing world runs on relationships, and mine are current. I work closely with freelance editors, book coaches, designers, and vendors across the book publishing industry, and I'm glad to connect you with the right ones for your project.
I work from San Antonio, Texas, licensed in Texas, clearing books for authors nationwide against the strictest standards their book could face anywhere in the country, because that's where a national book actually lives.
You did the brave part already. You wrote it down.
For the ones with a story to tell.
Verify all of it: my State Bar of Texas record confirms the license and bar number, and my LinkedIn profile confirms the General Counsel role at Greenleaf Book Group.
Know the risk before you publish.
For the ones with a story to tell.