Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up [Hardcover]

Rick Lax (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2008

After college, Rick Lax moved back into his parents’ house. The closest thing he had to a job was eating his parents’ food, sitting on his parents’ couch, and watching The Price is Right. An amateur magician, he spent the rest of his time practicing card tricks and rope tricks. And though he could tie four different slipknots, the necktie posed some difficulties.

Rick’s father, a successful Michigan attorney, told Rick it was time to move out and enter the real world. Rick certainly wasn’t going to get a job, so he went to law school instead.

This is the story of Rick’s journey from childhood to lawyerhood.

In Lawyer Boy, Rick uses the skills he developed as a magician to succeed in class, and learns how to become a lawyer without becoming his father. His journey through law school was exhausting, exciting, and infuriating, and, the way he tells it, so funny it’s criminal.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First-time author Lax delivers an entertaining and sometimes zany look at the first year of law school. Although he dreams of being a professional magician, Lax realizes after college that being a lawyer—like his father and most of his relatives (he provides a family tree showing the remarkable number of lawyers who are relatives)—is inevitable. After being accepted into the DePaul School of Law in Chicago, where passenger trains screamed past the classroom every ten minutes, he finds that the world of torts and criminal law is both like and unlike everything he had imagined. The workload is still brutal—as a professor tells him, For the next year, the American legal system will be your girlfriend. But Lax's discoveries of what he didn't expect offer fascinating up-to-date insights such as the inevitability of the depression he develops (lawyers are about four times more likely to experience clinical depression than the general population) and the hard fact that [l]aw schools don't fail students like they used to. They need the tuition dollars to stay competitive. (July)
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Review

"Immensely entertaining."

—A.J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically

"Rick Lax is really funny and uses his background in magic to see through the bullshit and hypocrisy that make up the law school experience. I'm really glad he's getting the law degree so he has a job other than magic—we don't need this kind of competition."

—Penn Jillette, author of Sock, co-host of Showtime's Bullsh*t!, and the larger, louder half of the performing team Penn & Teller

"A very entertaining work by a clever, hopeful, and unavoidably unscrupulous guy. My kinda book."

—Harry Anderson, author of Games You Can't Lose and star of Night Court and Dave's World

"Rick Lax may be at law school—and he may try to impress girls at parties by doing magic tricks—but he isn't a total geek. Okay, that's a lie. He is a total geek—but Lawyer Boy is thoroughly entertaining nevertheless."

—Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping

"Lawyer Boy is a blast . . . Rick Lax is an ideal guide to law school, generous with practical advice and juicy gossip. It’s The Paper Chase on nitrous—an oddball’s journey into the deepest inner circles of law school hell. The absolute best magician/law student/cowbellist memoir ever written."

—Christopher Noxon, author of Rejuvenile

"Rick Lax writes with a sharp wit and a fine sense of the absurd. Lawyer Boy might not help anyone succeed in law school, but it will certainly make the experience more enjoyable."

—Steven Lubet, author of Lawyers' Poker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031237335X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312373351
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,101,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny, light hearted, and excellent..., July 9, 2008

By 

J. Fagan "lawst" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up (Hardcover)

When facing the prospect of life, aspiring semi-successful cowbell player and magician Rick Lax decides to go to law school and follow in his fathers footsteps (sort of). But this is more than a coming of age story. This is a glimpse into the mind of the future of law (or humor. Or literature).

This book finally paints a picture of law school that isn't as doom and gloom as One L and 'The Paper Chase' (neither of which I would recommend to an aspiring law student). Rick Lax crafts a humorous book full of personal experiences and the minutia of law school while avoiding (thankfully) the staggeringly frustration and boring enterprise that can be the study of law.

Highly recommended to anyone applying to law school (or any grad school for that matter), this book takes the reader through the hills and valleys that a law student faces.

I found no typos or grammatical errors and see hints of A.J. Jacobs in Lax's lighthearted and witty style.

While this is a quick read, some of the best books are - keeping the reader involved and unable to stop until the last page. I read this book in about 4 hours and loved every page.

I hope we see more from Rick!

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I read his blog too., July 9, 2008

By 

R - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up (Hardcover)

Yeah I read Rick's blog too...and the book is even better...and it's not one of those blogs-to-books with no new content; this is all original stuff. Chasing child thieves thru the streets of Chicago, helping car accident victims, stopping shoplifters, dating strippers...tell me that stuffs not original.

My one complaint, and I agre with that other reviews in this respect, is that at 288 pages it is kinda short...though I doubt that other reviewer actually read it in 3 hours, as he claimed...I mean, he tagged the words "douche" and "author is a tool" As another reviewer pointed out, he clearly didn't read the book but has a vendetta. Maybe Lax got a higher grade than him on a test or something. HA!

All and all, this book is different from all other books Ive read this year, and you could do worse than spending a few hours with it.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars does what it sets out to do, July 9, 2008

By 

Olympia Vlantis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up (Hardcover)

i doubt that last reviewer actually read the book. i only think this because he claims there are tons of errors but doesn't point out a single one. and saying thinks like "this guy is just a huge tool" makes me think the reviewer has more of a personal vendetta against Lax than any legitimate complaint with Lax's writing. sounds like somebody needs to get a life...

the book is good--and I actually read it, thank you very much. i've been reading Lax's blog for a while now, (The book is different from the blog), so I was looking forward to read what Lax could do if given some real space. and he did a lot...

this book really will show you what it's like to go to law school. (whether that's something you want to know about...well, that's up to you. my advice to all thinking about law school might be Get out when you still can.) next, the jokes are really good. And they're not corney/typical lawyer jokes either.

in conclusion, the book is a lot of fun, and it does what it set out to do.