The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I was a very naughty Jeremy Blachman fan. I'd gotten a pre-release copy of his Anonymous Lawyer book this summer, with the intention that I'd review it on my blog, and then… didn't. Bar study crap and all that, but it's been a guilt-laden lingering item on my "to do" list.

Until today, when the planets have finally aligned and I can at last provide my review: I liked it. There. Was that so hard? Of course not, so here - let me throw in some more details.

What I particularly liked about the book is how Jeremy solved the problem of translating the Anonymous Lawyer blog to novel form. Unlike most other novels there's no detached narrative. The characters and plot are all developed and explained through his Anonymous Lawyer character's eyes. Which is no small feat, because, parallel to the development of his own hobbled character he has to notice, understand, and process the development of others' characters in order for the reader to be able to see it too. Whether or not he succeeds at this turns out to be the crux of the plot.

Which leads me to my only criticism of the book, which is that I felt that at the end certain characters behaved inconsistently within their own character. On the other hand - did they really? The book gleefully toys with readers' expectations of believability. Indeed, the blog does too. For people unfamiliar with it, the Anonymous Lawyer blog is written from the perspective of a jaded, somewhat sadistic partner in a large law firm, whose self-admitted behavior, no matter how awful, seems to have tremendous traction with readers. While for some it's probably voyeurism, for many others the intrigue seems to stem from an amazement that someone would finally be admitting to the behavior they themselves had observed in large law firms, albeit anonymously. Torturing associates, backstabbing colleagues… it apparently happens all the time in these environments. Of course it turned out that there was no such admission. The Anonymous Lawyer was merely a creature of Jeremy's imagination. But so gifted was his insight into human behavior and flair for the perfect subtlety of satire that scads of readers were convinced it was real. When it comes to illustrating the apparent endemic dysfunction of large law firm life, apparently Jeremy is the guy to do it.

So when I was getting ready to go to China and was trying to arrange with my friend when we could get together, and she said, "Oh, I can't meet on Saturday because I have to work [at the large American firm where she was clerking that summer]" I knew what I had to do: get her the Anonymous Lawyer book.

(Notice the Chinese newspaper I'm holding in the picture. To prove, you know, that we were actually in China…)

To further spread the influence of American legal cynicism, I gave a copy to my German law school friend too.