Fun to read when you're stuck in a law firm, and satisfying to read after you've escaped.

The main character is a real bastard, but he's funny.

And if you are interested in the culture of the legal world, it is a great read if you have a day to kill.

This is one of the funniest books I have ever read! However, it is probably more funny to me as an aspiring lawyer, but nevertheless I highly recommend it.

Hilarious book! I actually laughed out loud at a number of points, and when I read parts to my husband, even he laughed. You don't have to be a "big law" lawyer to get this book - although a knowledge of the stereotypes helps. Overall, a wonderfully funny, light read that I couldn't put down!

interesting insight into something i have zero perspetive on: the life of a 'big firm' lawyer...written like a weblog with occasional email entries made for an unique format. quick read...funny parts...weird ending.

Being the wife of a lawyer I found this book hilarious and frightening. I finished the book late at night and couldn't go to sleep because I just kept thinking about The Jerk.

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!

2024 Edit: I guess my humor has changed in the last 5 years because I did not find this as funny as the first time I read it. The MC is so cartoonishly horrible that his behavior did get a few shocked chuckles out of me; but I don't think I would still describe this book as 'hilarious'

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Despicably hilarious! I feel a little guilty enjoying this book as much as I did because the main character and his actions are truly awful. But I'd be lying if I said this book didn't give me genuine laughs the whole way through. This is a fun read.

It was definitely a quick read. It is very entertaining... however as a law student applying for summer associate positions.... it was also very terrifying. I would not recommend this book while trying to write cover letters to any big law firms.

I had a hard time starting this - that was completely my fault- I kept seeing my law office and hearing all the people I work with. I kept thinking about who this person would be that stole the donut, etc... and I would need to stop cause I could literally just see it all- in parts of the book there's notes of other lawyers responding to his blog (it's written in the form of a blog) some of these responses accuse the author of being a partner at their firm- I could have done the same thing-- yes it is a little exaggerated- but not by much. Make me really want to quit again... shoot.

I started reading Jeremy's eponymous law school blog sometime in 2003. In 2004, he started writing the Anonymous Lawyer blog (as "Anonymous Lawyer"). I read it for a while, but it got a bit repetitive and I stopped. A few months later, there was an article in the NY Times "outing" him as the writer behind AL. Fast forward: book deal, writing of book, publishing of book, optioning of book...

I really bought AL because of Jeremy’s personal blog, not the AL blog. I think AL the book is better than AL the blog. It has a plot. It's funny. And it's just long enough. It's a fluffy, quick read. I think it could make a funny TV series. I'd watch. The pilot, at least ;-)

The epistolary novel was a huge tradition back when the novel was first becoming big. I love that blogs have breathed new life into this form. Anonymous Lawyer, based on a blog of the same name, is the somewhat-fabricated record of the hiring partner at a corporate law firm. He shares his views on summer students, employee management, how to get to the top, and family matters. In this character Jeremy Blachman conveys a perfect, supercilious parody of the shark-like, soulless attorney as we know them from popular culture. In so doing he captures some of the truth, gives us a good laugh, and reminds us that the legal profession, like so many others, is riling from a century of accelerated change.

I hate trying to describe why something else is funny, so here’s a sample:

I overheard one of the associates say, "The dog really brings some life into this place. I don't feel so alone." I gave her some more work to do after I heard that. She's supposed to feel alone. This isn't just a regular business, where people can go into their co-workers' offices and chat about the weather or the stock market or their "relationship issues." It's a law firm. Time is billable. Time is money. Small talk doesn't pay the bills. Every minute you're talking to a co-worker is a minute the firm isn't making any money off your presence….

It’s funny because it’s (kind of) true. Lawyers do bill by the hour, tend to be very expensive, and much of one’s success in a law firm is measured in terms of those billable hours. What Blachman does is take that caricature and turn it up to eleven: Anonymous Lawyer says what we think lawyers say to each other behind closed doors.

I like to think Blachman is drawing attention to another, important issue here: the way in which work has changed over the twentieth century. Anonymous Lawyer makes fun of lawyers who expect work–life balance (you can have “one thing” outside of work, whether it’s reading, exercising, spending time with your kids, or—hah hah—sleeping, and anything else is greedy). He also loves how smartphones allow the office to reach associates anywhere and everywhere. He says this all in the most outrageous ways, of course, but beneath this humour is valid social commentary. Many of us, in many professions, are feeling more constrained by our always-on connections. Combine this with the way mass production has extended to colleges and universities, and you become expendable. Don’t want to work seventy- or eighty-hour weeks? No problem! You’re fired. There are twenty-two people waiting in the wings who are just as qualified as you, if not more, and are eager and willing to work that much. Don’t let security taser you on the way out—and have a nice day.

Insert rant about capitalism turning us into capital here—oh wait, been there, did that.

Anonymous Lawyer also provides a fantastic example of an unlikable, and frankly even unsympathetic, protagonist. You’re supposed to hate this guy: he’s self-centred, bigoted, sexist, and overly judgemental. Yet in a kind of feat of literary Stockholm Syndrome, you almost start rooting for him. Even if you want him to fail in the end, you nevertheless come to sympathize with his hatred of the Jerk. It’s a symptom of the blog being from Anonymous Lawyer’s perspective, of course—for all we know, other than his embezzling tendencies, maybe the Jerk is actually a nice guy. This book also gives us a textbook unreliable narrator, right down to the ending that diverges from reality.

This was a very quick read for me—literally read it in a night. So I’m surprised that, a few days later, I can still recall a lot about the characters. Blachman isn’t big on names, using the anonymous conceit to give people monikers like The Tax Guy, The Musician, and The Bombshell. Yet it works—we get to know them by their personalities and actions, or at least what Anonymous Lawyer tells us about their personalities and actions. I appreciate, too, that Blachman develops a plot throughout the novel. What begins as somewhat random observations from Anonymous Lawyer transform into machinations to become the next Chairman. I’m pleased that I predicted the identity of Associate X, and the final few blog posts/emails were a great conclusion to the story.

Read this if you like legal humour and, in particular, want to see the blog-as-novel form done right.

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