Brian Tannebaum - The Practice: Brutal Truths About Lawyers and Lawyering

BRUTAL TRUTHS ABOUT LAWYERS AND LAWYERING

For Lisa, Alexa, and Marissa

My girls

Had we met at any time during my law school years, Brian Tannebaum and I would not have recognized each other as part of the same species. Tannebaum would not have regarded my accomplishment of completing 25 full seasons of Madden NFL 2002 while playing out the string at Harvard Law School as proper training for a career as a legal practitioner. The fact that I had secured a job at a prestigious Manhattan law firm long before leading the New York Giants to six consecutive video Super Bowl victories wouldnt have changed his impression.

I would have viewed Tannebaums accomplishment of graduating from Stetson Law School and starting a successful small law practice as one regards a dog that can leap twice its own height to secure a Frisbee. Cute, and certainly something I could not do, but something that speaks more about the height of the Frisbee than the skill of the dog.

Of course, Tannebaum and I would not have met, or had any cause to interact, over the normal course of our careers. Part of the joy of going to Harvard or Stetson is that you can always feel superior to your opposite number on the other side of the spectrum. A Harvard guy and a Stetson guy walk into a courtroom, both leave the room feeling theyve won regardless of the outcome of the case. Theres no punchline there because Im not making a joke. Lawyers are a strange bunch.

The funny thing that happened on the way to our lives being blissfully ignorant of each other was that the economy tanked, and the legal job market collapsed. Well, that was funny to us in our own ways. Suddenly a whole bunch of law graduates realized they had no idea how to run a business. They realized they had no idea how to service clients. They realized they had no idea how to build a practice without a bloated corporate structure spoon-feeding them the answers in six minute increments.

Above the Law, the website I work for, at the time of the financial crisis catered to an audience of Biglaw associates and law students who wanted to be them. But after the crisis, those entry-level positions in the Biglaw world simply ceased to exist. Sure, the Harvard Law guys were largely okay: you can write Harvard Law in crayon and generally get an interview somewhere. But you werent going to be just fine if you finished in the bottom third of your class at Duke Law, or the bottom half at Vanderbilt Law, or were outside the top 25% at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Kids who wanted nothing more than to take the highest paying corporate law job on offer suddenly had to fend for themselves against people who had actually trained to be legal practitioners , instead of legal employees.

In 2011, Above the Law was looking for more columnists who could speak directly to the small law practitioner experiences and skills our readers needed in the new normal of the legal job market. In 2011, Brian Tannebaum was looking to blow up the Biglaw wanna-bes who thought that they just needed to slum it in solo practice before Wall Street law firms started hiring again. He wanted to say something to the people who thought law practice would be easy if they werent getting paid as much for it.

A mutual friend introduced us over email. I cant reprint the first email Tannebaum sent me. He earned the nickname T-Bomb from the readers for a reason. I also shouldnt reprint the second, or the third. But the fourth one, the fourth email in a thread that involved me begging him to send around some writing samples, read: I can send you some writing samples of legal documents Ive written, but I FIGURED SENDING YOU A BLOG POST THAT LOOKS SOMEWHAT LIKE SOMETHING I MAY WRITE IN THE FUTURE WOULD BE APPROPRIATE, as I havent seen much in the way of legal prose at ATL, unless I need to start clicking on some pictures or something.

Real talk from a real practitioner. This book is comprised of the stuff that they really dont teach you about in a school for lawyers. Its as good an answer as any to the derisive question from an elitist commenter on any law blog: What is a Stetson?

-Elie Mystal: Editor, Above the Law .