Cherry on A Satire of Law Firm Employment Practices

Having worked for five different law firms in one capacity or another over the years, I have a firsthand appreciation of the idiosyncracies associated with law firm employment practices.

Apparently, so does Miriam Cherry (McGeorge-Pacific).  She has posted on the bepress Legal Repository her new piece entitled: A Satire of Law Firm Employment Practices (Book Review of Anonymous Lawyer, by Jeremy Blachman).

Here's the abstract:

My essay is a review of Jeremy Blachman’s new book, Anonymous Lawyer. The book is a black-humorous stab at the hearts and souls of large elite law firms everywhere (if firms had such things as hearts and souls). In this review essay, I discuss why the blog struck a chord with so many readers, and why the novel Anonymous Lawyer contains a serious message about employment at law firms.

First, I place Anonymous Lawyer within the tradition of satire surrounding the legal profession. Specifically, I compare Blachman’s novel to John Jay Osborne Jr.’s earlier novel The Associates, which also takes large law firm life as its subject. Second, I want to examine how this novel fits into the literature that describes working life at a large elite law firm. Anonymous Lawyer highlights the issues of associate turnover, work-life imbalance, and workplace hierarchies that seem to characterize employment at large law firms. Ultimately, I conclude that Anonymous Lawyer adds to the formal academic discourse on law firm culture and, through its humor, challenges and goads the system toward change.

You can download what is sure to be this very enjoyable, satirical look at large law firm life at this link.

PS