Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Lawyer Boy

Most law school memoirs seem to focus on over achievers struggling through their first year at Harvard law school.In contrast, lawyer Boy focuses on Rick Lax’s first year at DePaul University law school. Lax is a talented and engaging writer who is clearly better suited to be a professional magician than a lawyer. Although the story is in large part about what Lax himself calls “a case study in growing up,” it’s singularly lacking in the “woe is me” crap that seems to pervade so many Millenial roman à clefs.

After college, Rick Lax moved back into his parents’ house. The closest thing he had to a job was eating his parents’ food, sitting on his parents’ couch, and watching The Price is Right. An amateur magician, he spent the rest of his time practicing card tricks and rope tricks. And though he could tie four different slipknots, the necktie posed some difficulties.

Rick’s father, a successful Michigan attorney, told Rick it was time to move out and enter the real world. Rick certainly wasn’t going to get a job, so he went to law school instead.

This is the story of Rick’s journey from childhood to lawyerhood.

In Lawyer Boy, Rick uses the skills he developed as a magician to succeed in class, and learns how to become a lawyer without becoming his father. His journey through law school was exhausting, exciting, and infuriating, and, the way he tells it, so funny it’s criminal.

For most law students, Lawyer Boy provides a far more useful guide to surviving law school than would, say Paper Chase or One L. Recommended.