Jeremy BlachmanReseñas

The Curve, co-authored by Harvard Law graduates Jeremy Blachman and Cameron Stracher, is a scathing satire of the contemporary law school paradigm. Set in the fictitious Manhattan Law School, aptly located on the borders of Brooklyn's polluted Gowanus Canal, the story exposes the dysfunctional interplay between a disconnected faculty and apathetic student body, for whom teaching and learning are of little or no interest. The most notable exception among the faculty is newbie professor, Adam Wright, a decent fellow who has fled the law firm grind for what he hopes to be a more rewarding career in academia. Wright soon discovers that almost none of his students has the interest or ability to become successful attorneys, and what's worse, that Manhattan Law School is so poorly regarded by employers that even the committed and successful students have no real chance of paying down their student loans. As if things couldn't get any more pathetic, Wright stumbles upon a scheme in which students are encouraged to bribe their way toward better grades and Law Review membership. The stakes rise when Wright is forced to choose between the path he knows is wrong, and a moral high road that runs the risk of his being blackballed by the administration and dumped by his beautiful colleague, Laura Stapleton.

The logistics of the law school's corrupt scheme push the bounds of the believable, but this is a satire after all, and the authors send a strong message about the need for reform in higher education. I especially enjoyed some of the witty observations targeted for a legal audience, the most memorable for me being that teaching a law student constitutional law is every bit as impractical from a career preparation standpoint as teaching a plumber's apprentice quantum physics. This novel is a must read for students considering whether to saddle themselves with law school loans, for those working in higher education, and for lawyers (and lawyer-haters) looking for a good laugh.

Based on a real blog (still extant) by the no longer anonymous lawyer at a large firm, the novel is in the form of a series of emails and blog postings from the Hiring Partner to his niece, an aspiring lawyer, but not of the same ilk as her uncle.

Our partner despises Daylight Savings Time because instantly a full sixty minutes of billable hours are lost and no one bothers to make it up in the fall, instead, just sleeping in. He hates holidays, why should we celebrate Memorial Day when we could all be earning money and still wearing little flags in the lapels? He considers himself quite reasonable honoring Jewish associates by scheduling their meetings in between services or over the phone. And why would anyone want Easter off? Jesus would surely be better honored by increasing the client's bill.

There is a very funny scene in which the Chairman is suffering a heart attack while simultaneously sending an email about his attack and how to take over the case and not lose any billable hours. As Anonymous Lawyer says, this is the only time you want to have your secretary like you, as otherwise she might delay just a little in calling 911. Otherwise, secretaries are only there to bring in food. Immediately his blog gets email from lawyers all over the country insisting they know who he is because numerous firms had Chairmen who had suffered heart attacks or strokes that very day.

And the way to save money is to have the annual associate thank you luncheon on Yom Kippur (at the firm of course) and serve a roast pig.

A brilliant satire that most lawyers will want to read in a brown paper wrapper. My only complaint is the ending. Abrupt doesn't begin to describe it. The other issue I have is that the book highlights some very real issues in these law firms that need to be addressed. Clients are routinely screwed. And it's not funny in the long run.

Sample from a very recent entry to the blog:

"I've been following the news this morning about the Ropes & Gray associate accused of insider trading as part of an investigation into the Galleon Group hedge fund.

Ropes & Gray released a statement, saying in part: "We are deeply disappointed about this situation, which suggests an extreme breach of this person's duty of trust to our clients and to the firm."

Well, no kidding. It's damn well a breach of the duty of trust to the firm. If an associate here found out some insider information we could use to make a killing, they better not be keeping it to themselves. They ought to tell a partner, tell the whole executive committee, give us all a chance to get in on it. If we can't trust our associates to bring us valuable opportunities to increase our own personal wealth, what do we really need them around for? I've spent years digging through client paperwork looking for information that I could use to make better investment decisions. And for an associate-- not even a partner-- for an associate to be running with this, without making the opportunity available to his superiors.... Well, it was a pretty easy decision to fire him. And it should serve as a warning to everyone else at the firm-- you find a good deal, you bring it up the chain of command and let us all have a piece.

Hey, it's not like I don't tell my associates when I go to mortgage foreclosure auctions and try to feast on the corpses of evicted homeowners. They're welcome to come along and join the fun.

As long as their work is done.

And they carry my briefcase. I hate carrying my own briefcase."

Warning: do not drink hot coffee whilst reading this book. Snorking and dirty clothes will result.

How many stars? 27! At least! for being the funniest of all possible books about lawyers. It's the sort of book you pass on to all your friends. However, something very odd, although my son and his law student friends enjoyed it, neither of the lawyers I sold it to did. Perhaps they felt it was a bit like a mirror and it wasn't the one which told them that yes, they were the fairest of them all. Pure and lily-white they ain't, no more than Mr. Anonymous.

This is office politics taken to the absolute limit and ten paces past that too. And then another ten. OMG how far, you think, reading it, can he go... further, further, further.


I actually read this years ago, but it was about time it got more than a one line review, because it really is one of the funniest, pee-yer-panties books I have ever read.

I picked this up on a whim and was not disappointed. This books was hilarious, although a touch over the top. Written in blog firm, this story of a law firm partner's relentless push to the top shows how crazy life at big law firms can be. I must say, though, I completely didn't get the ending!

A very funny book about a grumpy lawyer at the top of his game, and how he deals with life. Written in the style of a blog, and based on a real blog of the same name.

This is one of the funniest books I've read this year. Sure, the whole "partner-who-wants-to-be-chairman" storyline of the book was a good one--but what kept me glued to the pages of ANONYMOUS LAWYER for four straight hours was the fact that I couldn't stop laughing.

Two paralegals chatting incessantly? Easy solution--punch one of the them in the face. Anonymous Daughter getting fat? Easy enough to solve--let Anonymous Wife take her in for liposuction. My favorite scene from the entire book, though, has to be this one:

"We had a student (intern) last summer who kept kosher. Or at least that's what she said. But anytime she got offered lunch at someplace exceptional, suddenly she wasn't kosher anymore. You asked her to go to a cheap Indian place down the street, oh, she can't, she's kosher. But if you wanted to drive up the coast for a long lunch at Nobu in Malibu, perfect, she'd eat anything. She'd eat raw shrimp wrapped in bacon with a glass of milk, off the naked stomach of a Palestinian, on Yom Kippur, if you told her it was expensive."

And it's lines like that that make the fictional blog of Anonymous Lawyer at the heart of the story both funny, realistic, sarcastic, and brutally honest. Oh, and the fact that the author, Jeremy Blachman, really does write the anonymous lawyer blog (http://anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com).

Wonderful read!

Easy read. A senior lawyer, who is now planning his moves to become company chairman, starts a blog. He details his manoeuvrings to rise to the top and crush his opposition. When his current chairman dies and the next dies shortly after, he looses to his rival. His attempts to get even end up with both of them and his accomplice being sacked and an unlikely candidate becoming chairperson.

Really enjoyed this one. Easy to forget it was fiction. Liked the addition of those who found him out, interesting twist.

A series of blog posts by a cranky lawyer somewhere out west. Adapted from the popular blog of the same name.

A series of blog posts by a cranky lawyer somewhere out west. Adapted from the popular blog of the same name.

In my incessant Googling, I found a "Wordplay" review by Jeremy Blachman and had a bit of correspondence with the author. Now I've read his book, and really enjoyed this story of (fictional) law firm life and office politics, in the form of blog entries and e-mails. It's nasty, funny, and just a bit over the top. Now I want to go back and read the (ongoing) Anonymous Lawyer blog that started the whole thing, as well as the Anonymous Law Firm site.

Smart, nasty, funny. That this satire rings true is a frightening commentary on the American legal profession.½

Very funny.

A disappointing, one-note novel that is essentially the blog of a fictitious hiring partner in novel form. It was amusing to read the blog, for a while, but it eventually became boring - the same old vile nastiness, repeated ad infinitum. Now magnify this to book length. Tepid and lackluster.

LOVED it. I myself am going to law school this fall and planning to work at a law firm upon graduation, so it's like a window to my future career (which is depicted to be miserable but I still liked)½

When I first picked this up, I had no idea it was an actual blog that a guy (not a real lawyer) wrote for a couple of years before the book came out. I have no idea how long (or even if) the blog was designed to look as if a real lawyer wrote it, but now the log banner describes it as the fictional account of a lawyer. Damn. It would have been fun to read it and think it was real.

Boy did that guy create a thoroughly despicable asshole. Not one redeeming or humanizing quality – he’s not even a particularly good lawyer (even by his own admission). Throughout the book, he disparages one group after another; women as partners, paralegals, people who drive