Barman: Ping-Pong, Pathos, and Passing the Bar [Hardcover]

Alex Wellen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2003

Alex Wellen is an excited, ambitious, and overwhelmed twenty-something law student trying to integrate into one of the most powerful and promise-filled cities in the world—New York. As he moves from graduating student to licensed lawyer—the second most important nine months he ever spent “gestating”—Alex fantasizes about the glitzy, high-powered lifestyle of a Manhattan attorney. He imagines hobnobbing with the elite, eating at the best restaurants, and being a guest at the most coveted social events—but in this city of overachievers, he is reminded every step of the way that he did not go to Harvard. Can he overcome the profession’s snobbery by wearing overpriced ties from Barneys, seat-filling at the VH1 fashion awards, cavorting with B-list celebrities, and throwing TriBeCa loft parties?

Is it enough for him to look and play the part?

Along the way, we meet his fellow sufferers in the dread-inducing bar exam cram courses, his girlfriends and roommate, the law firm recruiters interested in hiring him (and those who aren’t), and the new associates who work with him at a high-profile law firm, some of whom, the odds are, won’t pass the bar.

Savvy and entertaining, Wellen’s story is The Paper Chase meets Sex and the City—a career memoir for anyone who has discovered his or her life’s goal, yet must overcome tremendous obstacles to attain it.

Barman is an honest, revealing, and hilarious portrait of a lawyer as a young man.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

We enter Wellen's fascinating life when he's a second-year law-school student, in the middle of a grueling round of interviews for a summer associate position--a coveted post granted to only a select few, where struggling students burn the midnight hours for some big law firm the summer before their last year in exchange for a taste of a real associate's salary. Wellen had his share of not-so-great interviews but managed to land a good gig nonetheless, in spite of his being from a "Tier-2" school (an unfortunate designation resulting from the famous--or infamous, depending on your perspective-- U.S. News & World Report law-school ranking system). Wellen suffered through the summer and his final year of law school and, bam, the real battle began as he prepared for the New York bar exam. With wit and deserved irreverence, Wellen equates this nine-month ordeal with human gestation, even dividing it into three trimesters (taking the bar, waiting for the results, and being a licensed attorney). His portrayal of these unsure days is right on, evoking the turmoil and thrill all at once. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

Alex Wellen is an excited, ambitious, and overwhelmed twenty-something law student trying to integrate into one of the most powerful and promise-filled cities in the world—New York. As he moves from graduating student to licensed lawyer—the second most important nine months he ever spent "gestating"—Alex fantasizes about the glitzy, high-powered lifestyle of a Manhattan attorney. He imagines hobnobbing with the elite, eating at the best restaurants, and being a guest at the most coveted social events—but in this city of overachievers, he is reminded every step of the way that he did not go to Harvard. Can he overcome the profession's snobbery by wearing overpriced ties from Barneys, seat-filling at the VH1 fashion awards, cavorting with B-list celebrities, and throwing TriBeCa loft parties?

Is it enough for him to look and play the part?

Along the way, we meet his fellow sufferers in the dread-inducing bar exam cram courses, his girlfriends and roommate, the law firm recruiters interested in hiring him (and those who aren't), and the new associates who work with him at a high-profile law firm, some of whom, the odds are, won't pass the bar.

Savvy and entertaining, Wellen's story is The Paper Chase meets Sex and the City—a career memoir for anyone who has discovered his or her life's goal, yet must overcome tremendous obstacles to attain it.

Barman is an honest, revealing, and hilarious portrait of a lawyer as a young man.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (September 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400048915
• ISBN-13: 978-1400048915
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,972,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paper Chase meets 1L meets Cad, October 3, 2003

By 

L. James (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barman: Ping-Pong, Pathos, and Passing the Bar (Hardcover)

There comes a time in the education of all law school students when they ask themselves: is it too late to fake my death, change names and become a janitor? Alex Wellen's BARMAN perfectly captures the soul-sucking process that precipitates this question. In his very funny memoir, Wellen recounts dealing with the quiet humiliations of attending a second tier law school, scoring a demeaning summer internship, cramming for the New York bar exam and landing his First Big Job-- sorting through documents in a stuffy room without windows. A dash of "Sex in the City" is woven throughout as well, as Wellen grapples with the challenges of building relationships and a professional identity at the same time. Most of all, this is an awfully well-rounded coming of age tale that will appeal to everyone, but particularly to anyone mulling a legal career. Proceed not lest ye read this book!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barman/Everyman, April 18, 2004

By 

Terrance H. Heath "terrancedc" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barman: Ping-Pong, Pathos, and Passing the Bar (Hardcover)

picked up 'Barman' looking for information, any information, on what law school, post law school experiences were like for someone not coming from Yale or Harvard. What I learned from Alex Wellen's book was not just what the process of becoming a lawyer was like, because during the process--with he relates with wit and honesty--Wellen seemed to discover for himself that passing the bar, and becoming a lawyer didn't necessarily define who he was or his worth. It didn't change who he was. I think it's worth remembering for anyone considering law school. What I got out of reading 'Barman' was that if I try, whether I fail or succeed, I will come out a different person on the other side of the experience, but still a person; one with value and who deserves happiness. It's a healthy way to approach law school, life or any other challenge, and maintain a sense of self without getting swallowed up by the process. I'm sure it's a book I'll refer to again as I continue my own process of getting into law school, and beyond.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars View from the other side, July 5, 2005

By 

Jason A. Miller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barman: Ping-Pong, Pathos, and Passing the Bar (Paperback)

It's nearly a decade since I started law school, and over five years since I sat for the New York bar exam. The novelty of "Barman" lies in the fact that its author, unlike the writers of "The Paper Chase" and "One-L", didn't go to a top tier law school. Alex Wellen went to Temple, ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a second tier school. I can do the author one better -- my midwestern law school didn't reach Tier 2 until after I graduated, and dropped out again this year. I also didn't finish in the top 10% of my class, as did Wellen, and had to wait a lot longer to land with a NYC law firm. So my philosophy from the first chapter was that while Wellen may have had it rough, he still had a comparatively easy time compared to many of us among the great unwashed.

As I was familiar with Wellen's journey, I paid more attention to the mechanics of his writing, bearing in mind his opening caution that his book was inspired by true events. Most readers may not know, for example, that Wellen described taking a portion of the New York bar exam (the multistate performance test) that wasn't introduced until several years later. Also, the thinly-veiled description of his law firm becomes even thinner if you study the patent on the final page of the book (this may have been intentional, of course). Finally, after describing every moment of his nine month journey from law school graduation through swearing-in to the bar, Wellen informs us in a very brief quota that he quit the profession less than a year later.

I mention these points only to praise with faint damns. I can't think of too many other things wrong with "Barman". Wellen captures the emotional spiral of studying for the bar quite effectively. So too does he capture the dread of waiting for results, and of looking for signs and portents in such miniscule details as the size of the envelope in which his results were delivered. The state of Michigan pulled a similar nasty trick on me in November 1998.

One final caveat: Large portions of this book escape the law altogether. Whereas One-L hardly ever ventured beyond the Harvard campus, Barman stretches from the wild West of Oregon to hostel laundry rooms in Western Europe. We get a lot of stories from Wellen's social life (most of his girlfriends did not wait for the third date to express their affection) as well as his slapstick attempts to convert his TriBeCa loft into a swingin' bachelor pad. These episodes add texture to Wellen's law school routine and help prevent the book from becoming monotonous.

Girlfriends of potential law students may cast off their worries, however: not all of us who survived law school had as much fun as Wellen.