Feige, 42, whose new TV series, "Raising the Bar," premieres Sept. 1 on TNT, had been working as a public defender in New York City for several years before he began an online diary about it for Slate.

Feige's writing ability and the gritty subject matter -- alternately harrowing and hilarious -- caught the eye of a rising literary agent, Tina Bennett, who asked Feige to lunch.

She didn't have to ask twice.

"Lunch?" Feige was recalling this week. "We didn't really do lunch."

By "we" Feige was referring to the staff of the Bronx Defenders, an office of 30 public defenders in a New York borough that was not short on indigent defendants.

Feige, a 1983 Madison Memorial graduate who got his law degree at UW-Madison, met Bennett, the agent, at the Four Seasons, a restaurant not targeted at those on a public defender's salary.

Feige looked at the menu and blanched.

Bennett said, "David, this is how it works. I'm the agent. Lunch is on me."

Feige ordered a $28 lobster salad sandwich. He recalled, "It remains the most expensive sandwich I have ever eaten."

The big-time lunch at the Four Seasons had an unusual conclusion, however -- especially for someone who has a new TV series debuting on Labor Day.

The lunch ended with Feige saying thanks, but no thanks, when Bennett -- who would help shepherd "Seabiscuit" and "The Tipping Point" to best-seller land -- suggested he write a book about being a public defender in the Bronx.

"I don't think I'm capable," Feige said. "Besides, I'm a public defender."

Feige wasn't being coy -- he loved being a public defender.

"Whatever else I do," he told me, "I will never again have a job that great. A job so unbelievably rewarding, difficult and righteous."

Even though he is now a professor of law at Seton Hall in New Jersey -- as well as a TV writer and producer -- Feige in conversation sometimes slips and speaks as if he is still a public defender.

"Our clients become our clients," he said, "after every other aspect of the system has failed them."

Feige's father, Ed Feige, is an emeritus professor of economics at UW-Madison and still lives in the house on the West Side that David grew up in. David got his undergrad degree at the University of Chicago, then came back to Madison for law school. When he returns today, like everyone who has been away, he shakes his head at the growth, especially on the Far West Side.

A few years after that Four Seasons lunch, Feige decided he might be ready to write a book after all. He had written well-received magazine pieces, including one for The New York Times Magazine titled "How to Defend Someone You Know Is Guilty."

Feige got back in touch with Bennett, and after an advance that allowed him to take a year off work, the result was 2006's "Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice," published by Little, Brown.

"Every day was a battle," Feige wrote early in "Indefensible," and while the book was well-reviewed, the court battles didn't all end with publication. Feige had named names, and some in the New York criminal justice system were not happy.

"I got sued," Feige said. "Utterly frivolous lawsuits. All were dismissed."

A Hollywood star had expressed interest in the book, but Feige thought he knew the one guy in show business who could get the story right: Steven Bochco, whose daunting pedigree includes classic shows like "Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law" and "NYPD Blue."

"He's the only person in Hollywood I sent the book to," Feige said.

Some might compare sending a book to someone of Bochco's stature to putting a note in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean, but Feige's luck held, at least in part. Bochco liked the book very much; he just wasn't sure there was a TV series in it. They talked, and then they talked some more. The producer couldn't help but be impressed with the younger man's passion.

In the end, Bochco and Feige agreed to work together, and came up with the idea for a series set in an urban courthouse that focuses on both public defenders and prosecutors -- friends and adversaries battling inside a flawed system.

Feige wrote the pilot -- which will air Sept. 1 -- as well as three others of the 10 episodes that make up season one. The series stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar as an idealistic public defender and UW-Madison grad Jane Kaczmarek as an imperious judge.

Feige, back teaching the fall semester at Seton Hall, will watch with the rest of the country, and then he will check the ratings. If they're good, maybe he'll drive into the city and celebrate with a lobster salad sandwich.

Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.