The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law, Second Edition

by Mark Edward Herrmann

Overview

"[I]f you want to become a real lawyer (or mentor a young'un to become one), and you really don't know how, then this is really the book for you. . . . Really!"
- The Honorable Richard G. Kopf, Senior United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska, at Hercules and the Umpire

"[A]absolutely addictive, unputdown-able. . . . Curmudgeon's Guide pulls off - with great elan - a technique that many writers attempt, only to crash and burn in the face of its extraordinary degree of difficulty. That technique is to deliver deadly accurate truths veiled in laugh-out-loud humor."
- Bruce MacEwen, Law Firm Consultant, at Adam Smith, Esq.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641054331
Publisher:	American Bar Association
Publication date:	06/07/2020
Edition description:	2nd Edition
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

MARK HERRMANN has done some things. He went to school—Princeton Universityand The University of Michigan Law School (Michigan Law Review, Order of the Coif). He clerked for a federal judge—The Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He worked as an associate at a small law firm—Steinhart & Falconer in San Francisco. He worked for two years as an associate, and eighteen years as a partner, at a large law firm—Jones Day, in Cleveland and Chicago. Mark is currently the Vice President and Chief Counsel—Litigation at Aon, the world's leading provider of risk management solutions and human resources consulting. Along the way, Mark found time to teach "complex litigation" for nearly a decade on the adjunct faculty of Case Western Reserve UniversitySchool of Law. He also managed to write a book that was fun and highly acclaimed,The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law (ABA 2006), which was a finalist for a Benjamin Franklin Award in 2007. He co-authored two other books, but they were neither fun nor highly acclaimed, Statewide Coordinated Proceedings: State Court Analogues to the Federal MDL Process (Thomson West 2d rev. ed. 2004) and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (Oxford 2012). His articles have appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune to the Tulane Law Review and University of Pennsylvania Law Review PENNumbra. Mark's adult children, Jessica and Jeremy, are great, and his wife, Brenda Gordon, provides the inspiration (or at least the motivation).

Table of Contents

Foreword to the First Edition Prof. Donald A. Dripps vii

Foreword to the Second Edition David Lat xiii

Chapter 1 How to Write: A Memorandum from a Curmudgeon 3

Chapter 2 How to Fail as an Associate 13

Chapter 3 What They Didn't Tell You in Law School 33

Chapter 4 The Curmudgeonly Assistant 45

Chapter 5 The Curmudgeon's Law Dictionary 57

Chapter 6 Seven Hours Locked in a Room 65

Chapter 7 The Curmudgeon Argues 87

Chapter 8 Dress for Success 99

Chapter 9 How to Enter Time So That Clients Will Pay for It 101

Chapter 10 The Curmudgeon on Couth 107

Chapter 11 The Curmudgeon on Clients 123

Chapter 12 The Curmudgeon's Guide to Building a Practice 131

Afterword to the Second Edition by Mark Herrmann 143

About the Author 163