Customer Reviews

A Young Lawyer's Jungle Book: A Survival Guide

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I have found this to be an excellent book on the practice of law. After nearly two years in a medium-sized, boutique law firm, I think the situations and advice of the author are on-point. The book is a bit unconventional, but after a few chapters, I found it well-written and really funny, which makes it a lot easier to digest. I recommend this book to all new lawyers. It has information you won't find anywhere else - including stuff nobody ever mentioned to me - and you might pay a hundred bucks to duplicate it, if you could find a "Senior" lawyer who cared enough to tell you everything written in the book. Five stars - a definite "buy."

Best if read before law school, or the LSAT's for that matter.

Nothing new here. The law is, for the most part, a thankless job. What other well paying job isn't?

The first year of practice can be a make or break year for the unprepared. Most of the book is common sense, but should be read because your head will be somewhere else, and you need all the help you can get.

It's a good book to read at the gym on the stationary bike, and short enough to be finished in a few work-outs.

Some of the reviews are crazy. This book will NOT put you on the fast track to making partner.

This book includes solid advice for the new attorney. The problem most new lawyers have is not that they're not smart, but that they don't know what to do, and sometimes even how to behave in a profession setting. I recommend this book to all of our new associates. (Actually, it's quite humorous in parts.) Every one of them has told me that it has helped them in their jobs and in their relationships with senior partners. (One senior partner even told me he was impressed with how much better one associate was behaving. I didn't have the heart to tell him that this book was the reason why.) Strongly recommended.

I was having problems with work. I never seemed to know what to do, or how to do something right, and I always seemed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Plus, it seemed that I never really knew what I was supposed to be doing. A partner came by my office last Friday and gave me a copy of this book, and asked me to read it. I was very embarrassed, and hid it in my carryall. I was very, very unhappy at work, but I started to read it. I spent all weekend reading it, and ended up reading it three times! This is an amazing book. I now see what I've been doing wrong, and I will change everything I do at the office. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Messinger. I certainly wish you had been one of my professors. I really wish I had known about this book months ago. I recommend it to everyone.

Mr. Messinger's book proposes that first-year associates can get ahead in the law business by looking right, talking right, and by playing duplicitous games of masks and daggers with their employers and coworkers. In defense of his advice, the author says that he's just describing the world as it is and not as it should be. Aside from the pervasive amoral attitude, the book is not all bad; the author is intelligent, and his generous advice about the basics of legal research, writing, and client relationships is sound. But his foul calculus of manipulation strikes me as a con. In effect, the author excuses the misery of associate life by saying, "Suffer, sublimate your soul, and do what you can to make partner. After that, the money will make up for your lost youth, and you can buy back whatever joy you gave up."

As a matter of fact, the author's own life refutes the theme of his book. Mr. Messinger experienced life as an associate at a respected Honolulu law firm first-hand, and is admittedly well-qualified to write about that world. But his reaction to the practice of pinstripe law was to move to a remote tropical island where he lived a decidedly more relaxed life than the one he advocates in his book.

Our culture seems to run on the fuel of deception. Messinger's book is an antidote. It forewarns law students and young professionals of the realities of being a junior associate in a larger law firm. Ideally, THE YOUNG LAWYER'S JUNGLE BOOK should be consulted before entering law school. For example, in calculating the cost-benefit ratio of attending a particular school, it is important to realize that popular published school rankings are based in significant part on school prestige and placement. These latter are determined in large measure by the school's success in placing top graduates into prestigious large firms. Salary data at the top end of the higher ranked schools' post-graduation mid-range pay comes from these firms. These high figures skew the schools' private sector salary averages and medians unrealistically upward for the majority of students at all but the most elite schools. If Messinger's portrayal of law firm reality is not the life you want,! you will need to rework the school rankings in light of what you can discover about legal work more suited to your goals. These other jobs will be, almost invariably, lower paying. This, in turn, will greatly affect the educational debt you can afford to carry. THE YOUNG LAWYER'S JUNGLE BOOK deals almost exclusively with larger firms and how to succeed there. It is not suitable as a review of other sources of legal employment, but works admirably in helping the reader determine whether the salary and prestige of the large firm is worth the diminution in quality of the rest of your life. (William R. Keates' 1997 book, PROCEED WITH CAUTION, is an even more insightful work on the same subject.) Middle-aged and trained in the medical sciences, I found Messinger's ironic, sometimes sophomoric writing style annoying. It masks clarity and blunts directness. Nevertheless, his is a perceptive, first-rate mind, and his book is well worth its price. It qualifies as a "must! read."

I strongly disagree with the comments in the San Antonio review. This book is even MORE valuable for those who will NOT be in big firms. I work in a smaller law office, and the scenarios in the Young Lawyer's Jungle Book could have been taken from a fly on the wall. I see some of the same mistakes described in the book being made all around me. I've caught myself more than a few times before I was about to make a mistake in public. This book is an absolute MUST for EVERY new lawyer. It has advice that applies to small-firm lawyers (and government and public-interest lawyers too) as well as for those in big firms. Indeed, I showed this book to friends, some are in big firms and some in other types of law offices, and they ALL really, really liked it. (Give me my book back, Peter!) I also disagree on the comment about the author's writing style. I kept picking it up and re-reading it, when someone wasn't asking to borrow it. (Don't leave it in your office!) The book is both funny and profound. It's sad that something hilarious is assumed to be inconsequential. Nothing could be further from the truth with this book. Yes, there were parts that I didn't get at first, but on the whole the Young Lawyer's Jungle book manages, sometimes in a single sentence, to make me laugh and to make me think about serious aspects of law practice and professional life, sometimes long after I've read it. I also read Proceed With Caution. It does present a picture of big-firm life (which is not really that much different from better smaller firms, because many firms, like mine, are started by lawyers who were partners in large firms). But Proceed with Caution is not really an advice guide, it's more like a diary. And it's not really in the same league as the Young Lawyer's Jungle Book. This book earns its five stars. If you're not yet finished with college, still in law school, or just started working as a lawyer, ANY type of lawyer, you absolutely, positively MUST read this book.

Mr. Messinger paints a broad perspective of the initial years of practice facing the newly minted J.D. As a second career (non-traditional) student facing entry into the legal field, I found most of the advice dispensed to be pretty familiar. That said, every morsel of advice that is dispensed is both necessary and practical.

What sets this book apart is the fact that is very realistic look at the initial years of practicing law-warts and all. After many years of being pumped up as a top achiever, the recent grad finally has to face the real world. Not everything is sunshine and roses. There are very high expectations, and most of the time one ends up performing thankless, mundane tasks. Of course, this is the nature of being a "rookie" in almost any field or profession. Messinger does a good job of almost pleading with the reader to, as a prospective associate, to reach for excellence in everything they do.

The book also provides a good snapshot of office politics and political survival. Much of Messinger's advice about the politics of a law firm is applicable to corporate life in general.

All in all, a must read for anyone considering a career as an attorney. I would recommend this as summer reading for those who plan to enter law school in the fall.

This book has some valuable insight on being an attorney.
I am currently in law school and I've had the opportunity to work for
several firms, some small, others big. The more I've been exposed to
this profession, the more I've realized that it is all a song and
dance and the people who get ahead are those who know the dance steps.
This book outlines, rather well, the important steps one should take
to succeed in this profession. Of course it isn't some magical book
that will do wonders for your career, and I don't feel that this book
even purports to be such. It is simply a well-written account of how
to do well in this field. It contains valuable insight on how to
interact with people--tips and advice that I found helpful during
internships and even while interviewing with firms. Of course there
are other ways to get jobs and do well, but anyone interested in
succeeding in the legal arena would do well to read this book. In
fact, I wish I had read this book before even starting law school
because the song and dance begins long before you land a job. Because
of the honesty about attorneys and the field in general, the book will
even help those who are on the fence about pursuing a legal career.

I have enjoyed reading this book as a new associate in a mid-sized regional law firm. I find it entertaining because I recognize just about everything he talks about in my own firm.

However, the writing style was difficult to read. It was too conversational for my taste. I also found that the footnotes were not funny and evidenced a very "nerdy" sense of humor that I couldn't bear after a while. Finally, his use of italics is overboard. I understand that he thinks that a lot of things are important, but I would limit the italics to once a paragraph, not every sentence! It's overkill!