All right — I admit it. Despite the fact that it was wildly popular when it first began, I was one of those people who didn’t really care for the blog Anonymous Lawyer.
It wasn’t that the writing was poor or that the fictional hiring partner (remember in the beginning we didn’t KNOW for sure that he was fictional) was unconvincing. Just the opposite.
The posts seemed all too real — and that, my friends, was the problem. Reading about a ruthless, opportunistic, pompous, windbag of a hiring partner at a large law firm simply held no fascination for me. After all, I’ve been practicing law for nearly 30 years and I don’t need to read about fictional accounts of these guys — hell, I can give you have a dozen names of men just like the Anonymous Lawyer right now. And the truth is, I don’t like any of them.
So I had few expectations when Jeremy Blachman sent me a review copy of his book a while ago. I didn’t care for the blog and thought I’d probably feel the same way about the book. And I was right — sort of.
After reading Anonymous Lawyer, I still didn’t care for the fictional hiring jerk portrayed in the book. Surprisingly though, I did enjoy the book itself.
Unlike the typical whining, bullying and rude behavior I read about on the Anonymous Lawyer blog, the book rounds out the lawyer and adds a slice of “reality” by including an Anonymous Niece — a person outside the legal sphere — who brings an innocence to counter-balance Anonymous Lawyer’s hard edges.
In addition, instead of just seeing Anonymous Lawyer as a complete ego-maniac, Blachman allows a glimpse of Anonymous Wife and his family. There’s also the tried and true intrigue of a competition with The Jerk for the firm’s chairman’s job. (Hey, I said that I didn’t like pompous a**holes — but like all A-types, I enjoy a good rivalry.)
Finally, somebody knows about Anonymous Lawyer’s blog and there’s the question of who that is and whether he’ll be ousted for his posts. What effect will this have on his desire to be chairman?
These threads make for an entertaining romp through the fictional world of Anonymous Lawyer. So go ahead, put that legal brief aside for a little while and indulge yourself. These tales about that unscrupulous lawyer in the corner office will make it just a little bit easier to go back to that endless paperwork.
Buy it here.
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