Customer Reviews

Brush With the Law

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

but I don't mean that as an insult! I just finished reading it in serialized form, published weekly in an online news service for lawyers in New York, and I admit I looked forward to each installment as a welcome distraction from the reality of the actual practice of big firm law. From the perspective of someone who graduated from an Ivy League college and law school more than twenty years ago and who has been working as a Wall Street lawyer ever since, though, I feel it's important to say that this book really, truly does not tell you very much about what it is like to be a lawyer or what parts of law school will end up making a difference later on in your career. How could it? The authors are still quite young and haven't seen their own stories play out. All we know is that they managed to graduate and get jobs as associates at a good, if rather idiosyncratic litigation boutique in LA. (Loved the bits about Urquhart's unique recruiting style! Kids, don't try this at home!) So they are still in Chapter 2 of their careers; the whole book covers only Chapter 1, law school. I think that some of the "lessons" they learned or impart are going to look different with the passage of time. Chapter 5, including their 25th law school reunion, should be a hoot, but I'm worried about what happens to them in Chapters 3 and 4. I agree with other posters that there is a strong '90's feel to their stories, I don't think the zeitgeist is the same today. Their discovery that you can coast at Harvard or Stanford or similar places is not particularly amazing, most people learn that as undergraduates, it's not really a law school thing and has been going on for at least a couple of centuries in Harvard's case. Byrnes has guts talking about smoking crack but that's a fairly unusual habit for a law student, let's face it, it's a truly bad idea and he is darn lucky he survived it. But I admire these fellows for their honesty and for capturing something real. I enjoyed the book and came to like the narrators, warts and all. Mostly I recommend it as a good antidote to that awful relic of a book One L for people thinking about going to law school -- just keep them both in perspective, the reality for normal people lies somewhere in between.

As a classmate (and non-acquaintance) of Jaime Marquart at Harvard Law School, I found this book impossible to put down. It is essentially an unblinking confession of how Marquart at Harvard, and Robert Byrnes at Stanford, achieved slightly-above-average grades in law school while not attending class, not studying until a day or two before their exams, and spending most of their time (apparently) gambling, drinking, taking drugs, and/or bouncing from woman to woman. The disturbing but important lessons from this are (1) that it's not worth making an effort to pull ahead of the pack grade-wise at Harvard or Stanford law school; (2) that, if you go to Harvard or Stanford to learn law, rather than to prove something, you shouldn't be worried about being with the pack anyway; and (3) in all areas of life, you can't grind your way to stardom (assuming stardom is what you want). For law students who do *not* attend Harvard or Stanford (or, I guess, Yale), this book should be approached with extreme caution. Grades *are* important, and hard work *can* make a big difference, in your likelihood of success if you're getting a degree from any but the top handful of schools. For more on this, see *Letters from Law School,* by Lawrence Dieker. (One other point: the URL given in *Brush with the Law* for seeing copies of Byrnes's and Marquart's exams, outlines, etc., appears to be dead.)

"Brush with the Law" completely debunks the law school myth established by "The Paper Chase" and "One L," and reveals the grim reality behind top-tier law schools. In "One L," Turow supposedly studies 15 hours per day and "learns to love the law" (blech). In "Brush with the Law," Marquart and Byrnes ignore law school until the night before finals, and spend most of their time smoking crank and gambling away their student aid.

While most law students probably don't smoke crank (at least I didn't), a lot of things in this book are right-on. First, the fixation on the bell curve of grades. GPA, Law Review, and big firm jobs become determinants of social worth. The social scene is so small and insular that gossip and cliques become as big a deal as they were in high school. Marquart and Byrnes don't buy the B.S., and their outsider perspective on this soul-sucking gamesmanship made me empathize with them as kindred spirits.

That said, the ending left something to be desired. We're brought to the brink of existentialist nihilism, but then the authors have "epiphanies" at the end that seem unconvincing and slapped-on. Read this book for the take on law school, not for the ending.

I must confess that I absolutely loathe Hunter Thompson. His association with this book (however, remote and probably purchased) and the analogies to Fear and Loathing almost kept me from picking up a copy. But, having graduated from Harvard Law in '97, I couldn't resist.

And, while part of me feels like I should be ashamed to admit it, I really, really enjoyed reading it. While the dual narrative structure and the sheer number of characters creates a bit of confusion, the book is extremely well written and walks the appropriate line between informing and entertaining.

While I really didn't know Jaime well (though I did meet him once or twice), I love him after reading his work. He has a rare ability to penetrate the human psyche and provide the reader with a clear understanding of the inner turmoil felt by first year law students everywhere. His humble, little boy from Texas outlook is endearing and his insights profound.

I did know the Kankoos (honestly, does anyone who graduated in or near '98 not recognize who this is?) and I think I recognize Brian Green, though I can't be absolutely certain on him. The Kankoos dated an acquaintance/friend of mine during law school. He and I actually fooled around once after some Gropius party and I ended up working with him during a summer. He was (is?) immensely likeable and absolutely hilarious. But, while his character is portrayed brilliantly, I don't think the author gives enough glimpse into the Kankoos' personal struggles, which were real and many and very much serve to demystify him.

Naturally I had no reason to know Robert Byrnes or Tim Apparel and, not having smoked crack in the Haight recently, found them a tad more difficult to connect with. Though I thought Robert was somewhat self-involved and thought his end-of-the-tale enlightening smacked of insincerity, I'll admit that his tales of orgies and hard drugs both engaged and entertained.

Still, this is very much Jaime's tale - well conceived, well crafted, full of tremendous insight for aspiring law students and an awakening for ex law students who only thought they coasted through their law school experience.

I'm writing this having just finished my first semester at Harvard Law. This book is an all-too-accurate description of law school life. Contrary to other reviews here, I can vouch for the fact that class attendance isn't necessary and that you can learn a semester's worth of material from other people's notes in 5 days (and still pull A's). Also, nobody cheated on any exams in the book; law school exams are impossible to cheat on as they're open-book (this includes any printed material other than your classmates' exams).

The people here aren't as bad as they'd have you believe; I have a lot of great friends that I've made this year, but you do have to seek them out from the dull masses.

The book is fun, funny, well-written and should be required for anyone thinking about attending a prestigious law school.

Great read! Much more than just another book about law school. Brush With the Law is a true, honest look into the lives of two people on seperate ends of the country who stumble upon the same place: a battle ground to fight the demons inside of them and attempt to see beyond the shadows of their youth. I found it suspenseful, colorful, revealing and enlightening.

I'd like to see this book adapted to the big screen.

A lot of these reviews concentrate on how well this book correlated with the reviewers' own law school experiences. It is utterly unlike my own law school experience, but I have several classmates for whom it's a near-perfect match (albeit substituting powder cocaine, mushrooms, ecstasy and marijuana for crack). This book is basically a fluff piece; it's a nice respite from the outdated and overwrought "One L" and the "work-hard-don't-play-at-all" prep book "Law School Confidential." Further, I loved that the narratives are basically recounted with a smirk--it's authentic, to me, because there was so much wry smirking during law school that I wondered if my classmates were at all capable of saying anything with complete sincerity. Overall, "Brush with the Law" isn't going to change anyone's life--or their mind (about law school)--but there are so many books impressing upon students that law school is like intellectual concentration camp, that it's nice to see just one concentrating on the low-key side of law school life.

For those who have passed the rite of passage of Scott Turrow's ONE L, Brushes With the Law provides a humurous and entertaining counterpoint. In essence, the two main characters engage in a startlingly large array of high-risk behavior, served with a small helping of existential musings. One of the characters, Marquart is clearly the more reflective of the two. Throughout the narrative, he peppers his comments with deep insights into the character and motivations of his collegues in Harvard Law, and ultimately himself.
The Byrnes character is a bit more stulted, he seems to live in the narrow world of immediate pleasure. Byrnes walks through the Blakes' proverbial "path of excess" with little regard for his friendships, legal-professional duties, and even his own welfare.
The most redeeming quality of this books is its ease of reading and lack of an pretensions. After a summer of heavy reading with included Hesse's Glass Bead Game, Kafka's The Trial, and a few of the Greco-Roman Classics, Brush With the Law provided me with a welcome refuge in the form of low-brow prose and pulp fiction. The antics of both of these slackers are entertaining, a times a bit worrying, but endearing.

Any book that ends with the protagonist on a hilltop quoting Nietzsche runs the risk of being rather horrible. That said, this is a pretty good book. I have no idea who the target audience is. More on that later.

As a current student of one of these venerable legal institutions, I have to say that the authors' descriptions of law school are extremely accurate. The common archetypes of law school students are almost ridiculously easy to caricature, and the authors do so with fine effect. More intriguing is their exposition of how easy it is to be an average student at these schools while gambling heavily, living in a different city, and/or smoking crack. The hardest part, truly, is getting in.

One particularly good twist is Byrnes' description of how everyone changes over the course of the first year and becomes more socialized to (boorish) law school norms. Almost all the pressure and agony first year is self-inflicted - an accurate twist on Turow's widely-read and distinctly annoying One L.

Beyond the law school hook, it's your basic book about two smart guys losing faith in any institutions they once thought venerable. See, e.g.,: Ken Kesey. It's been done before (though not enough) but this account is particularly entertaining. Overall, Byrnes is a better writer with more plausible dialogue (the authors alternate chapters), while Marquart gets more emotional hooks and provides a more compelling story.

The more edgy side of the book is the the authors' addictive spirals, into crack-smoking, gambling, mountain-biking, and other vices, that round out the book. Other reviews have complained about the "nihilism" and meaninglessness of the authors in this regard, but, of course, they miss the point. Almost all the characters in the book (most of them now well-paid lawyers) are shallow and insipid and fairly devoid of "meaning." The authors are at least honest about their faults.

But who should read this book? One target audience: anyone who thinks law school might be interesting, or just something to do for three years, but who finds law-school-aspiring people to be annoying. Any student of Gen X mid-90s slackerdom should be entertained. Peruse the first 20 pages or so and you'll know if you like it. If you don't want to believe that Harvard Law School is, indeed, full of dumb people... it's not for you.

Nothing could bore me more than a book about "law school." The Hunter S. Thompson recommendation made me curious, though. And this book is about far, far more. Law school is just the setting; in the same way Star Wars is set in space, that setting influences much of the action, but the dramas are transcendent, and many. To name a few: lost love, friendship, and all the emotional swings connected with wealth turning to poverty, drug highs turning to drug lows; plus the scary confrontation with lost love and the search for some permanence in life. Perhaps most amazing is the cast of colorful and quirky characters (my own favorites were the genius/vixen Niccola and the wickedly brilliant "Kankoos"). Read 3/4 of it late into the night; went to work dying to know how it turned out; got home, and finished -- satisfied and inspired. Well (and at times beautifully) written. Highly recommended.