Guidebook for junior lawyers navigating their first few years as associates in "Biglaw." Advice from a former Biglaw attorney on how to succeed in the challenging legal environment that is Biglaw. Tips on how to achieve success no matter your goal. An insider's real perspective.

Chosen one of the Best Books of 2015 by Good Housekeeping and Redbook**A Harper's Bazaar Must-Read**Film and TV Rights Optioned to Paramount**A 2015 USA Best Book Award Winner*As featured in:Huffington Post Books, Harper's Bazaar Magazine, Bloomberg BNA, Vault, Working Mother Magazine, Chicago Tribune, The New York times, Redbook Magazine, Good Housekeeping Magazine: 20 Best Books by Women in 2015, BuzzFeed: September Reads You Must Find Time For, San Francisco Book Review: Best Books for Sweater Weather, Sheknows.com: Most Anticipated Novels of Fall, Culturalist: Best Book Club Reads, YourTango: Incredible Books Every Smart Woman Should Read this Fall

"As a young partner at Dunn & Sullivan, one of New York's most prestigious law firms, Carney Blake has represented dozens of high-profile clients. But being a pawn of Big Law often means defending the corporate dirt bags of the world--the spillers, the drillers, and the killers. Morality aside, Carney is starting to make a name for himself ... So when Carney is suddenly asked by his firm's chairman to represent the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit--and not, as usual, the corporate bad guys--he warily accepts. Maybe they're turning a corner, he thinks"--

A noble profession is facing its defining moment. From law schools to the prestigious firms that represent the pinnacle of a legal career, a crisis is unfolding. News headlines tell part of the story—the growing oversupply of new lawyers, widespread career dissatisfaction, and spectacular implosions of pre-eminent law firms. Yet eager hordes of bright young people continue to step over each other as they seek jobs with high rates of depression, life-consuming hours, and little assurance of financial stability. The Great Recession has only worsened these trends, but correction is possible and, now, imperative. In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment to flawed U.S. News & World Report rankings criteria in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits to enhance American Lawyer rankings and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions—being honest about the legal job market, revisiting the financial incentives currently driving bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more—can take the profession to a better place. A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal profession, this insider account is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the profession can right itself once again.

"One L" meets "Legally Blonde" in this candid, funny, and true story about one woman's experiences at the Columbia University School of Law.

An Associate's First Year: A Guide to Thriving at a Law Firm provides guidance on the expectations of a first year attorney, establishing yourself as a leader within the firm, receiving and responding to performance feedback, and much more.

This coursebook addresses key topics in the evolving legal profession and the business of law. The book features chapters on the traditional law firm; the corporate client; the emergence of alternative legal services providers; legal technology; access to justice; employment and diversity in the legal profession; and legal education reform. Students will learn from detailed, insightful interviews of a broad range of legal industry professionals, including the general counsel of an international company; chief litigation officer of a Fortune100 company; director of knowledge management at a Biglaw firm; a legal innovator who founded a pioneering legal process outsourcing company; a legal industry consultant; and a legal tech startup CEO and co-founder. Interactive exercises and questions for reflection and discussion are included throughout the book. Read reviews of this title here.

This is the story of how and why such powerhouse Wall Street law firms as Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Davis Polk & Wardwell, and Sullivan & Cromwell, grew from nineteenth-century entrepreneurial origins into icons of institutional law practice; how, as white-shoe bastions with the social standards of an exclusive gentlemen’s club, they promoted the values of an east coast elite; and how they adapted to a radically changed legal world, surviving snobbish insularity and ferocious competition to remain at the pinnacle of a transformed profession. It is no accident these firms are found in New York, the largest city in the world’s largest economy and also the nation’s largest port, principal banking center, and epicenter of industry. At the dawn of the twentieth century, linked by canals, railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, transatlantic steamships and undersea cables, New York became the economic nerve center of the United States. It also wielded formidable political power and supplied every President or Vice President of the United States between the Civil War and the Great War.

Forty-one years of a life in the law, and then, one day, no more law. Just like that. With humor and self-deprecation, this book presents observations on my life before during and after I dreamed my way into my law afterlife.

In Strong Advocate, Thomas Strong, one of the most successful trial lawyers in Missouri’s history, chronicles his adventures as a contemporary personal injury attorney. Though the profession is held in low esteem by the general public, Strong entered the field with the right motives: to help victims who have been injured by defective products or through the negligence of others. As a twelve-year-old in rural southwest Missouri during the Great Depression, Strong bought a cow, then purchased others as he could afford them, and eventually financed his education with the milk he sold. After graduating law school and serving in the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, he rejected offers to practice in New York and San Francisco and returned to his hometown of Springfield. Strong exhibited his lifelong passion to represent the underdog early in his practice, the “trial by ambush” days when neither side was required to disclose witnesses or exhibits. He quickly became known for his audacious approach to trying cases. Tactics included asking a friend to ride on top of a moving car and hiring a local character called “Crazy Max” to recreate an automobile accident. One fraud case ended with Strong owning a bank and his opponent going to prison. When he sued a labor union for the wrongful death of his client’s spouse, he found his own life threatened. With changes in the law that allowed discovery of information from an opponent’s files as well as the exhibits and witnesses to be used at trial, Strong and fellow personal injury attorneys forced a wide array of manufacturers to produce safer products. When witnesses of a terrible collision claimed both roadways had green lights simultaneously, Strong purchased the traffic light controller. After three months of continuous testing at a university, the controller failed, showing four green lights, and Strong learned that fail-safe devices were available but had not been implemented. These fail-safe devices are now standard on traffic lights throughout the country. In his last venture, Strong represented the state of Missouri in its case against the tobacco industry, culminating in a settlement totaling billions of dollars. He reflects on the changes—not always for the better—in his oft-maligned profession since he entered the field in the 1950s. Thomas Strong’s story of tenacity, quick wits, and humor demonstrates what made him such a creative and effective attorney. Lawyers and law students can learn much from this giant of the bar, and all readers will be entertained and heartened by his victories for the everyman.