Pilot Program

Lawyer, author, pilot, father of five, husband, dog dad—Chris Stevenson wears a lot of hats.

First came pilot. After graduating from Purdue University’s aviation program, Stevenson worked as a flight instructor for about a year before flying Boeing 727s for a cargo company. “I got to go all over North America in the middle of the night, which is a little less glamorous than it may seem,” says Stevenson. “I did that for about two and a half years and realized I had a desire to go to law school, and so I stopped flying professionally.”

The career change wasn’t totally out of the blue. An aviation law class at Purdue had piqued his interest. “I even signed up for the LSAT in between the time that I graduated from Purdue and I got my job flying cargo, and then decided, ‘I don’t want to go to law school, I want to go fly airplanes,’” he says.

Today, those hours in the sky still come in handy in his legal work. “Understanding technical aspects of how planes work, how engines work, aerodynamics—those types of things have helped me in my legal practice when it comes to, for example, developing a product liability case where I have to read and understand engineering drawings or maintenance records or trying to work with an expert to find the best theory or approach to a case,” he says. “I tend to have a technical mind that helps me in those areas, and I think flying is a big part of that.”

Stevenson still flies, just not nearly as much as he’d like. “I find myself very busy with family and work,” he says. “I would love to do more. Hopefully as I get a little older, I get a little more time, less family commitments.”

But that family time—Stevenson is the father of five boys—also led to another of his careers. “I started telling my boys bedtime stories when they were younger and that developed into the character Gabriel Cooper, the main character for the books,” he says.

Stevenson writes historical fiction for middle-grade readers, a surprising choice for someone who wasn’t always a history buff. “I found, growing up, I really didn’t like history. I thought it was boring; they just make you learn a bunch of dates and spit them back out for a test. You never learn the interesting stories behind lots of important events in American history,” he says. “So I personally started digging in and realized how fun and interesting this could be.”

Stevenson decided to write down a few of those bedtime stories and sent them to a publisher. “It took a lot of work but, thankfully, I was successful and I have a couple books,” he says. His first book, The Drum of Destiny: Gabriel Cooper & the Road to Revolution, debuted in 2016 and won the Grateful American Book Prize that same year. In 2020, Stevenson published his second novel: The Cannon of Courage: Gabriel Cooper & the Noble Train of Artillery. The books follow the title character, a young orphan, as he joins the American Revolution.

Stevenson hopes to make it a series of five books; he’s currently working on his third. Working full-time as an attorney doesn’t leave a much time for writing, but Stevenson says his legal writing skills have influenced his historical fiction writing.

“In legal writing, extra words are frowned upon,” he says. “Judges usually want concise, to-the-point writing. Learning how to write as a lawyer helps every other part of your writing because you’re advancing the story with every word rather than having filler words that don’t really do anything or add anything to the story. I think my legal writing has helped my hobby writing and fictional writing.”

Stevenson’s latest title is partner at Ball Eggleston in Lafayette, where he practices personal injury law—and where his family’s beloved corgi, Lilibet, is often featured on the firm’s social media accounts. “I feel like our firm has itself gone through a bit of transition with some older partners retiring and newer partners, including me, having leadership abilities with the firm,” he says. “That’s exciting.”