Lawyerland: An Unguarded, Street-Level Look at Law & Lawyers Today Book

Lawyer, law professor, and published poet Lawrence Joseph has an uncanny ear for dialogue, and in Lawyerland he reproduces conversations he's had with attorneys practicing in New York City. His unorthodox technique involves extensive and lively quotation that reads at times like a Mamet play, and Joseph readily admits, quoting the late New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, that the book is "truthful rather than factual, but solidly based on facts." Names and some factual details have been changed, but the interview subjects relate their stories and do provide the gritty texture of how these lawyers view themselves and their insular world. In eight separate chapters, each devoted to a practitioner of a specific legal specialty, Joseph presents the people who keep the system working in all their profane, cynical, and exuberant glory.Read More