This collection of essays written by The Curmudgeon, offers practical, honest and you need to know this advice for surviving and thriving in a law firm. The book covers the basics of law practice and law firm etiquette, from doing effective research and writing to dressing for success, dealing with staff and clients and building a law practice. Concise, humorous and full of valuable (albeit curmudgeonly) insight, this is a must-read for every newly minted law school graduate or new lawyer.
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From the Back Cover
The Curmudgeon has been practicing law for just a little too long, and he may be too jaded for his own good. Beneath his crusty exterior, however, lies a fount of wisdom. The Curmudgeon knows everything about the legal profession, and he's willing to share his keen observations from the corner office. He offers practical and honest, if blunt, advice for surviving and thriving in a law firm. He tells you what you need to know about billing, managing your assistant, drafting internal memos, dealing with clients and building your law practice. Read the Curmudgeon and find out what drives law partners crazy, what will impress them and what ten mistakes you should avoid. Concise, humorous and full of valuable (but curmudgeonly) insight, this is a must-read for every lawyer and law student. "The Curmudgeon cuts to the chase about how to practice law successfully. . . .Instructive, insightful, ... and just plain fun!"
-- Gary Garfield, General Counsel, Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, LLC.
About the Author
Mark Herrmann graduated from Princeton University in 1979 and The University of Michigan Law School (Order of the Coif, Michigan Law Review) in 1983. After graduation, he clerked for The Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mark practiced at Steinhart & Falconer in San Francisco from 1984 to 1989, when he moved to Cleveland and joined the international law firm Jones Day, where he is now a partner.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
57 of 69 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read for All Attorneys, Especially Those Practicing in the "Big" Firm
October 13, 2006
Format:Paperback
I don't know Mark Herrmann, but I feel his pain. Every attorney over 40 will recognize him/herself in Mark's curmudgeonly advice to the next generation. Hopefully, every attorney under 30 will take heed and follow unless they have a better mousetrap to offer (and those of us over 50 shouldn't doubt that they do!). In the absence of that mousetrap, no young attorney could go wrong picking up this book and heeding the advice from a very successful (and funny!) lawyer in his, ahem, middle years; one who is generous enough to donate the proceeds from the sale of this book to the American Bar Association.
That said, here are my favorite "bits."
THE C: Rule No. 10 from "How to Fail as an Associate" -- So long as it's clearly marked "DRAFT," no one will care if its incomprehensible
MY COMMENT: Nor, may I add, spell-checked. A memorable moment in one of my own associate's short careers was this response to "why are there so many spelling errors in this?" "Because," the associate replied, "I knew you'd revise it anyway so why should I bother?"
THE C: "What They Didn't Tell You in Law School" -- To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting.
MY COMMENT: And don't think this applies only to the law. One of America's finest poets, W.S. Merwin, passes along the following advice from one of his mentors, the great John Berryman:
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally . . . .
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
W.S. Merwin, Berryman, from Flower & Hand
THE C: The Curmudgeon's Law Dictionary: Objection -- An attorney-client communication made during a deposition for the purpose of ensuring favorable testimony.
THE C: Seven Hours Locked in a Room: Beginning lawyers also sometimes worry about how they will work with exhibits when taking depositions. This is the process. Mark. Identify. Authenticate. Then, ask whatever the heck you want.
MY COMMENT: And if you don't know how to authenticate a document, look it up! It's right there in the Evidence Code. Take a cheat sheet with the statutory language to the deposition with you. If you manage to properly authenticate all exhibits to a deposition, you'll be better than 99.9% of the lawyers taking pre-trial testimony every day of the week. If you also establish the business records exception to the hearsay rule, you might achieve associate heaven -- the partner in charge of your case will be so delighted with your work that he'll excuse you from spending four weeks in a storage shed in Plano, Texas, reviewing documents.
THE C: The Curmudgeon Argues -- If the judge poses a question to you, there's one rule: Answer it. Answer it directly, in a single word, if possible. "yes" or "no" are fine candidates.
MY COMMENT: In the old days, when they used to let associates do scary things like argue appeals, one of three appellate judges leaned over the bench with a look you'll eventually come to recognize -- he's about to pull your intestines out through your throat.
"Ms. Pynchon," he said, much too sweetly, perhaps sensing the truth -- I was a first year associate and this was my first appellate argument -- "doesn't your argument require us to split a cause of action?"
SPLIT A CAUSE OF ACTION??? I'd never heard of such a thing in my entire life. My civil procedure professor had never mentioned it and the term appeared in neither party's briefs. SPLIT A CAUSE OF ACTION??? OMIGOD. I felt nauseated; faint, even; the room actually began to grow dark around the Judge's (now sinister) face.
Then I recalled something my boss told me just a few weeks earlier. "If you don't know the answer to the question, don't 'wing' it and for god's sake don't avoid it. Admit you don't know the answer and offer to brief the issue. When the Court asks questions, it's not testing you; it really needs to know. You do the entire panel a favor by offering to file a post-argument brief."
So that's what I did. I said, "I'm sorry; I don't know the answer. I'd be happy to brief it for you." I watched a cloud of disappointment cross the old Judge's face. I'm certain I ruined his moment, if not his entire day, by not properly playing my role -- young, dumb and female. I hadn't dodged, shifted or weaved. Most importantly, I no longer felt nauseated or faint. I won that appeal, but could just as easily have lost. I assure you, I'll never forget the lesson learned nor what it means to split a cause of action.
THE C: How to Enter Time So Clients Will Pay It -- Record your time promptly.
MY COMMENT: Anything else is just suffering. The second best thing about being a mediator is no time keeping. Why do we hate it so much? I don't know. But I do know that I've spent agonized hours trying to reconstruct a day during which I know I worked non-stop for at least ten hours but could only recall two that were billable. Don't do it. Don't put it off. Do it, in fact, now. Why are you reading this blog when you should be billing your time??????
That said, here are my favorite "bits."
THE C: Rule No. 10 from "How to Fail as an Associate" -- So long as it's clearly marked "DRAFT," no one will care if its incomprehensible
MY COMMENT: Nor, may I add, spell-checked. A memorable moment in one of my own associate's short careers was this response to "why are there so many spelling errors in this?" "Because," the associate replied, "I knew you'd revise it anyway so why should I bother?"
THE C: "What They Didn't Tell You in Law School" -- To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting.
MY COMMENT: And don't think this applies only to the law. One of America's finest poets, W.S. Merwin, passes along the following advice from one of his mentors, the great John Berryman:
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally . . . .
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
W.S. Merwin, Berryman, from Flower & Hand
THE C: The Curmudgeon's Law Dictionary: Objection -- An attorney-client communication made during a deposition for the purpose of ensuring favorable testimony.
THE C: Seven Hours Locked in a Room: Beginning lawyers also sometimes worry about how they will work with exhibits when taking depositions. This is the process. Mark. Identify. Authenticate. Then, ask whatever the heck you want.
MY COMMENT: And if you don't know how to authenticate a document, look it up! It's right there in the Evidence Code. Take a cheat sheet with the statutory language to the deposition with you. If you manage to properly authenticate all exhibits to a deposition, you'll be better than 99.9% of the lawyers taking pre-trial testimony every day of the week. If you also establish the business records exception to the hearsay rule, you might achieve associate heaven -- the partner in charge of your case will be so delighted with your work that he'll excuse you from spending four weeks in a storage shed in Plano, Texas, reviewing documents.
THE C: The Curmudgeon Argues -- If the judge poses a question to you, there's one rule: Answer it. Answer it directly, in a single word, if possible. "yes" or "no" are fine candidates.
MY COMMENT: In the old days, when they used to let associates do scary things like argue appeals, one of three appellate judges leaned over the bench with a look you'll eventually come to recognize -- he's about to pull your intestines out through your throat.
"Ms. Pynchon," he said, much too sweetly, perhaps sensing the truth -- I was a first year associate and this was my first appellate argument -- "doesn't your argument require us to split a cause of action?"
SPLIT A CAUSE OF ACTION??? I'd never heard of such a thing in my entire life. My civil procedure professor had never mentioned it and the term appeared in neither party's briefs. SPLIT A CAUSE OF ACTION??? OMIGOD. I felt nauseated; faint, even; the room actually began to grow dark around the Judge's (now sinister) face.
Then I recalled something my boss told me just a few weeks earlier. "If you don't know the answer to the question, don't 'wing' it and for god's sake don't avoid it. Admit you don't know the answer and offer to brief the issue. When the Court asks questions, it's not testing you; it really needs to know. You do the entire panel a favor by offering to file a post-argument brief."
So that's what I did. I said, "I'm sorry; I don't know the answer. I'd be happy to brief it for you." I watched a cloud of disappointment cross the old Judge's face. I'm certain I ruined his moment, if not his entire day, by not properly playing my role -- young, dumb and female. I hadn't dodged, shifted or weaved. Most importantly, I no longer felt nauseated or faint. I won that appeal, but could just as easily have lost. I assure you, I'll never forget the lesson learned nor what it means to split a cause of action.
THE C: How to Enter Time So Clients Will Pay It -- Record your time promptly.
MY COMMENT: Anything else is just suffering. The second best thing about being a mediator is no time keeping. Why do we hate it so much? I don't know. But I do know that I've spent agonized hours trying to reconstruct a day during which I know I worked non-stop for at least ten hours but could only recall two that were billable. Don't do it. Don't put it off. Do it, in fact, now. Why are you reading this blog when you should be billing your time??????
26 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Mark Herrmann has provided an extraordinary gift to the legal community. The Curmudgeon's guide is well written and precise in its well-informed commentary. The author, a partner at Jones Day, has a sense of humor and a gift for succinct, valuable insights, the likes of which professors and senior lawyers rarely divulge. To read this book is to stumble on such secrets of the temple as to refashion the mind of a young law student or lawyer. To give but one example, I had wondered, during my summer, why, when I had provided my partner with some useful and succinct legal analysis and fact finding, I was rewarded with a terse "Good work," and a lot more work and why, when I had rushed through a job and provided him with a rambling memo, I would not hear from him for a week. Now I know. Feedback on assignments is so scarce in law firms, it is difficult to parse the code that your superiors traffic in. Curmudgeon resolved my confusion immediately: he notes that when he gets good product from associates, he rewards them with more and better work. When he doesn't, he simply ignores them. Work is the life blood of a lawyer, and the better quality work you can get assigned, the better your work experience and your career will be. Curmudgeon's guide resolves so many questions before they are asked, it really should be a bible for anyone starting their legal career. I am certain that the great lack that this book meets is the result of a lack of time and not malicious intent on the part of our would be mentors, but it doesn't undercut the extraordinary generosity of this tough love book. The tone may be grumpy, but an avuncular grumpiness that is very welcome. Please read this concise tome of invaluable wisdom. Or don't. My own career is not established, so I can ill-afford the informed competition that the reader of this book would present. But if you do read it, you'll find it useful, fun, and too damn short.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Every first year law student should read this book before they clerk for a law firm. The curmudgeon is dead on in laying out exactly what is expected of new associates and summer clerks.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Telling it like it is
Mark Hermann tells the unvarnished truth about what it takes to succeed in the practice of law. He doesn't say it's easy, but he tells you what partners really care about and how... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Holly J. Fujie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, compact, and simply a pleasure to read
The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law by Mark Hermann is a short, snappy guide full of years of law firm wisdom for young associates delivered tongue-in-cheek--and yet quite... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Michelle Fabio, Bleeding Espresso
3.0 out of 5 stars
AKA, how to work for a horrible boss
The advice in this book epitomizes everything I tried *not* to do and be when I supervised inexperienced attorneys and law school students. Read more
Published 10 months ago by B. Ramm
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for students and attorneys
I adore this book! I read a copy of the 1st chapter online and had to buy it. I love its tongue n cheek sarcasm. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Amber K.
5.0 out of 5 stars
From A First-Year Associate In Biglaw
I'm a first-year associate at a big law firm, and I was looking for a quick read that would speak to _my situation_, and I found exactly what I was looking for in The Curmudgeon's... Read more
Published 16 months ago by RCDD
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome
This concise introduction to the practice of law is enlightening, entertaining and easy to read. The Curmudgeon is the best mentor in town.
Published 20 months ago by Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good material
As a young lawyer, I feel this book is a great tool to help me get started. Although geared towards someone in a large firm, it provides valuable tips on how to take a deposition... Read more
Published 20 months ago by R. Jamison Tinsley Jr.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great content, lousy binding
The content of this little book is fantastic. He points out the correct way to approach the practice of law. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Paraclete
5.0 out of 5 stars
Real Advice
I read this as a 3L and I greatly wish I had read it my first year. The book is written towards an entering associate in the litigation section of a firm. Read more
Published 22 months ago by M. Blackburn
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pedantic procurator
Written in a a jovial style that hides the sharp edges of the writer behind a thin veil of humor. This collection of essays and speeches provide a somewhat jaded view of legal... Read more
Published on April 25, 2011 by John Gardiner
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