Tom the legal blogger is going to Hollywood

"If you knew my life, you would not think it is the stuff of television drama," Tom Goldstein told The Washington Post. But Hollywood thinks otherwise. Sony Pictures Television has just bought the rights to the 39-year-old Goldstein's life story.

Tom Goldstein is a lawyer and a blogger. By day, he's a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, a legal firm with 250 lawyers who bring in $250 million in revenue each year. By night, he plays poker and writes the SCOTUS Blog that follows the workings of America's highest court. ("SCOTUS" is short for the Supreme Court of the US.)

Before the film comes the television pilot. It's being written by Barry Schindel, who has produced episodes of the hit series Law & Order.

The television pilot will be based on an actual international child abduction case handled by Tom Goldstein's real-life lawyer wife, Amy Howe. The case, which the US Supreme Court heard on 12 January, focuses on whether a mother who took her child from Chile to the US against the wishes of the father (Howe's client) must return the child.