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Summary: Professionalism in the 21st century
Review: Stracher has written a brilliant, insightful view into modern professionals. I take exception to the reviewers who found this book unemotional and dry: it is this very tone that makes the book so much more believable. Passionate denounciation of the process will only make the main character sound like some whining kid. As an auditor in a big accounting, firm, I can confirm that auditing firms are similar to law firms. People who have been there will read this book, nod and smile (bitterly and knowingly).Great stuff, Cameron! Can't wait for your next book!
Rating: 
Summary: This is not the only type of law...
Review: Stracher portrays himself as an unfocused, directionless intellectual wanderer too concerned with the merits of a case to continue participating in the mindless and endless procedural posturing perfected by big law firms at the expense of their clients. This work is not a novel and it is not a tale. There is no plot and no character development. Somehow, only Stracher had an inner life. What he did with it besides repeatedly noticing how mindless big firm practice is remains unknown. The book is as empty as he claims big firm practice to be. There are no insights here. The only subtlety is that there is a downside to everything remotely positive about how big law firms conduct litigation. Every sentence is punctuated with the message that big firm life has no independent meaning or significance. Stracher does not tell an insider's secrets. He was not a "fly on the wall." He so successfully illustrates that he was just a drone that the book is nothing more than a drone. There is no advice, no interpretation, no substance. The book is forgivable as airplane reading but if you prefer your fluff in another genre, there is no reason to kill time reading the musings of an overprivileged lawyer who finally comes to realize that work is not play, that the world does not revolve around him, that litigation is not a good way to settle disputes, and that big firms pursue their bottom line over legal elegance. Stracher never addresses the heart of the issue, which is how to find personal happiness and meaning in life no matter where you are and what your work is. If his years at the law firm are lost years, its because he came to the firm expecting it to infuse him with character and direction. Stracher also ignores the fact that any professional services firm will look remarkably like the firm where he worked. He is just too self-absorbed to notice that. Large organizations are hierarchical, highly structured, and ritualized. Friends at work are not the same as friends at home or school. Its all true but nothing new or unique. This book might be more appealing to somebody who, like Stracher, never had a real job before law school. Hey folks, getting up and going to work every day for a bunch of people who don't seem to know what they are doing or care much about you is not very much fun unless you are on your own self-rewarding mission with a purpose decided in advance and not adopted merely to please or impress family and friends. But if you want to find out how to be your own pilot, Stracher offers no guidance, no tools, no ways of viewing the world and your place in it other than looking for an emotional handout. If you buy it, buy it used. Use the savings to buy a copy of Fast Company magazine to go with it so that you can get some real pointers on how to make something of nothing.
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