CLEVELAND- LAWFUEL – Legal News, Legal Jobs Network – For a book that only a lawyer could love, ranking 47,369th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list looked pretty good Monday morning.
“It was doing way better than my treatise on consolidating state court litigation,” said Cleveland-based Jones Day partner Mark Herrmann, author of “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law.” “Curmudgeon” is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek compilation of professional and career advice for young attorneys. But this week, his Amazon rank took off, rocketing into the lowish-three-figures. As of November 1st, it stood at 484.
Besides reminding us how many lawyers, ex-lawyers and lawyers-to-be there are in America, Herrmann’s trip to relative best-sellerdom demonstrates the power of the blog to sell old-fashioned printed matter. Most notably, the Wall Street Journal’s law blog began writing about and excerpting the book on Monday. See:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/30/law-blog-special-the- curmudgeons-guide-to-practicing-law/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/30/the-curmudgeons-guide- defending-depositions/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/31/the-curmudgeons-guide-how-to- write/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/11/01/the-curmudgeons-guide-you-are- not-a-potted-plant/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/11/02/the-curmudgeons-guide-billing- time/
(Due to their length, these URLs may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)
See additional links about the book at the Jones Day Web site: http://www.jonesday.com/pubs/pubs_detail.aspx?pubID=S3259
Like John Housman’s formidable law professor in The Paper Chase, Mark Herrmann’s Curmudgeon is, by all accounts, a fictional character. But his advice has obviously resonated through the halls of the Big Law establishment and the schools that feed it. The Curmudgeon offers practical and honest, if blunt, advice for surviving and thriving in a law firm. He tells young (and not so young) lawyers what they need to know about billing, managing an assistant, drafting internal memos, dealing with clients and building a practice. The Curmudgeon reveals what drives senior partners, what impresses them and what ten mistakes to avoid at all costs. The Curmudgeon: He’s an associate’s worst nightmare — a mentor with an attitude.
“The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law,” can be ordered at http://www.amazon.com/Curmudgeons-Guide-Practicing-Law/dp/1590316762/ sr=8-1/qid=1162226960/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-4637195-4821656?ie=UTF8&s= books.
