Young associates in trouble.

• Author: Henderson, William D.

UTTERLY MONKEY. By Nick Laird. New York: Fourth Estate. 2005. Pp. 1, 344. $13.95.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW. By Kermit Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2005. Pp. 1, 370. Cloth, $24; paper, $14.

INTRODUCTION

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, (1) and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. (2) Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, (3) these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as theft reputations suggest?

To be sure, the most prestigious law firms offer substantial compensation, a shot at a highly lucrative partnership, and resume value that opens a wide array of doors. Indeed, it might seem perfectly rational to believe that many young attorneys would be willing to place their personal lives on hold in exchange for a brighter post-firm future.

Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's In the Shadow of the Law (4) and novelist Nick Laird's Utterly Monkey make the case against practicing law in capacious office buildings at the center of large, interesting cities. Both novels star young associates in trouble--associates who dislike their jobs, disagree with their clients, and who rarely get home at a decent hour. As did John Grisham's The Firm (5) and Cameron Stracher's Double Billing, (6) these novels suggest that the best course for the young lawyer is to avoid practicing law at a big law firm at all COSTS. (7)

In this Review, we consider the stories that these novels tell about law firm life and compare them to the actual data on law firm life that may be gleaned from the operations of law firms. Drawing on financial information and associate satisfaction surveys conducted by The American Lawyer, we created a new dataset to explore the relationship between money and various indices of job satisfaction. To gain insight on how lawyers view their lives and working conditions before and after the partnership decision, we also mined the findings of several important longitudinal studies of lawyers and their job satisfaction over time.

Some of this empirical evidence suggests that many young associates have good reasons for enduring punishing work conditions at elite law firms. (8) But much of it underscores the seriousness of the punishment. Laird and Roosevelt suggest that overachieving law students have ended up at large firms by privileging the external measures of professional success and by resisting the possibility that less celebrated career options will open the door to other important and ultimately more satisfying facets of life. (9) By eliding hard choices, these young associates find themselves in unhappy, unfulfilling environments without really knowing how they got there, disempowered and alienated from their work. And, ironically, their wealth and prestige still make them the object of envy.

Are Laird and Roosevelt correctly indicting firms and those that join them? The data are not inconsistent with their critiques. Our ambition here is to review their fictitious accounts and assemble the empirical facts so that young lawyers, when they decide where they would like to work, can reflect on what trade-offs they may or may not be willing to make.

1. BIG LAWSUITS IN WASHINGTON

   In the Shadow of the Law examines what kind of people might be willing to work at a law firm and what kind probably shouldn't. The setting is Morgan Slier, a white-shoe firm in Washington, D.C. The book begins with the arrest of Wayne Harper for murder (Roosevelt, p. 4). Meanwhile in Texas, a chemical plant explodes, with its workers reported to be first "dancing," then "falling down," and finally, "sort of twitching" (Roosevelt, p. 6). Did Harper kill someone? Should the corporate owners of the chemical plant be liable for the deaths and injuries caused by the explosion?

   Morgan Siler is the firm charged with handling both cases, and both are resolved satisfyingly--the murder rather thrillingly--in the final three chapters of the novel. In the book's middle, the progress of the cases takes a back seat to what they reveal about sophisticated firm practice.

   Roosevelt proceeds by examining the inner lives and outward conduct of a vast number of voices. The lawyer with the fewest regrets is Peter Morgan, who transformed his father's successful Washington-gray-eminence-enterprise into an increasingly bottom-line-oriented undertaking. Harold Fineman is his lieutenant, a litigator who has abandoned any moral qualms in a quest for discipline and effectiveness--he tells himself that "[l]ife is a competition" (Roosevelt, p. 47) and that he is "[l]ike a shark," (Roosevelt, p. 324). Morgan Siler's other partners concoct dubious, liability-avoiding security deals; one feels so guilty about his work that he suffers an early heart attack and devotes himself (to the displeasure of the firm's leadership) to pro bono work.

   The characters drawn with the most sympathy are two young associates, Mark Clayton and Katja Phillips. Mark struggles with his inability to attain any sense of mastery (or competence, for that matter) over a steady stream of banal litigation assignments and already doubts his career choice. (10) In contrast, Katja is a highly adaptive lawyer who methodically completes her work and safeguards her personal time. She wants to be more than a successful lawyer, but she is increasingly unsure that the firm will permit her to do fight and avoid wrong.

   Two other associates, Ryan Grady and Walker Eliot, adapt to the firm in different ways. Ryan ducks responsibility, bills fraudulently, and schemes to make himself look good at the expense of others. For Walker, who recently finished a clerkship with the Supreme Court, Morgan Siler is a lucrative way station that provides few challenges worthy of his talents. His credentials get him special treatment from the partners, and he returns the favor by occasionally dashing off, in an hour or two, brilliant legal arguments that carry the day. Yet, when he is needed most, he disappears, turning down assignments so that he can prepare to leave the firm to teach. (11)

   Many of these lawyers work to get Harper off death row--it turns out he didn't do it. They also try to get the chemical plant owners off the liability hook--it turns out that they were bad actors who did do it. In the end, the most noble associates turn on the plant owners and disclose the liability-avoiding financial chicanery to the victims.

   The book struck us as a plausible account of litigation in a big firm. There are meetings, discovery conducted in warehouses, oral arguments, depositions, and disputes with opposing counsel. Each of these regular big firm occurrences is novelized with scrupulous accuracy, and though they slow the narrative, they do render a faithful--if bleak--picture of associate life. (12)

   At the end of the novel, though, the only main characters left at Morgan Siler are the monstrous Peter Morgan--and he loses his charming wife in the process--and the conniving Ryan Grady. Roosevelt appears to be interested in the ability of lawyers to act morally, and his novel suggests that big firm work may be incompatible with moral choices. Moral acts, such as turning over evidence that will establish the liability of the corporate owners of the chemical plant, require departure from the firm.

   It is a dark view of big law, even though Roosevelt leavens it with a favorable outcome in the pro bono defense of Wayne Harper, an outcome that probably would not have been possible without the expenditure of the firm's resources and talent. Even then, those resources are grudgingly allocated by Peter Morgan, and that victory depends on the willingness of one lawyer to give up his ability to practice law.

   One could even call In the Shadow of the Law 346 pages of tragedy, followed by three chapters of a happy ending. After all, those who stay at the firm cannot change--a "new life eluded [them] and was now beyond [their] grasp" (Roosevelt, p. 250).

   Roosevelt himself might characterize the novel as more epic than tragic. He has said that he used a "mythic structure" for his thriller, with "a reluctant hero who is summoned away from the ordinary world and called on to do great things, and ... archetypal figures who help or hinder him--an old wise man, a shapeshifting trickster, a dark shadow." (13) Because he appears to believe, in almost Jungian fashion, that all myth stories are pretty similar, "you can more or less map the characters from In the Shadow of the Law onto the characters of Star Wars." (14)

   Star Wars is a fun model, and it is worth noting that In the Shadow of the Law has its share of clever allusions and dry wit. For example, in Henry VI Part 2, a rebel suggested that "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." (15) Early in In the Shadow of the Law, after the explosion in the chemical plant, one of the company executives says, "That's the first thing you do. You call all the lawyers" (Roosevelt, p. 7). Entertaining, sure, but our considered reaction to the book was that the world it portrayed was rather more Kafkaesque than English Renaissance. Roosevelt's storyline suggests that elite law firms exact a heavy toll of compromise and lost opportunities on the talented, who find that they are surprised about what they gave up. Their regret is both unbearable (16) and unavoidable. (17)

2. FEAR AND LOATHING IN LONDON AND ULSTER

   Utterly Monkey, like In the Shadow of the Law, posits that a lawyer who works for a large firm is "wasting his life" (Laird, p. 292), and must be "an unhappy person" (Laird, p. 291). The protagonist, Danny Williams, an up-from-the-vaguely-mean-but-very-Protestant streets of...