sentences:  In his first job out of law school Grippando served as law clerk to the Honorable Thomas A. Clark, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta.There and in private practice Grippando worked on a number of appeals in death penalty cases, an experience that later served him in writing his first published novel, "The Pardon".From September 1984 to September 1996, Grippando was a trial lawyer in Miami.