"Anonymous Lawyer" (the blog)

I enjoyed reading this for a couple of hours today, finished archives from March to May, 2004, almost forgot to have my $3.50 pasta down there in the building, and absolutely ignored the noise of the annoying Gestetner 7502 in my freezing humble room.

It is just fantastic!

The satirical tone of Anonymous is my favorite. The U.S. "biglaw" culture is anatomized subtly through the monolog-like weblog of a hiring partner from a big law firm in a major city. It is certainly a fiction, but after reading only a small portion of the whole blog, I bet most of the legal professionals in this circle could not disavow such a realistic picture of the bloody brutal inhumane aspect of the six-figure paychecks. Nevertheless, the blog is well-balanced so that readers might avoid a hasty conclusion that biglaw just sucks. There are happy people there; not many, but there are some; not the happiness that you would like to have, but some people may love it. For either law students or not-so-senior attorneys, the blog sheds light on numerous quirky situations that may be inevitable in a big law firm. More importantly, you get to know what may actually happen beneath the surface. Though the extent of such enlightenment might be limited because the blog is after all fictional, it is still valuable as you would hardly have any partner willing to give you such candid information.

The picture of legal profession is often distorted or misunderstood by the outside public. Many know attorneys get well-paid; few know more. I would highly recommend this blog and I will finish it to see if I would buy the book based on this blog.

The blog started before I arrived in the U.S., and I regret that I could not have read it any earlier. Actually I happened to know this blog through the useful but semi-deserted Blawg Wisdom. I happened to have read the author's blog (now shift to another blog) on law school life. The author is a recent law graduate yet I really appreciate his insight of the legal career.

Personally, I wish I could write English well. I know it is hard for me, a Mandarin Orange. Anyhow I love reading Anonymous Lawyer.