Book: The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law

The recently published The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law, authored by Jones Day litigation partner Mark Hermann, has gotten some nice reviews in the blogosphere.

The Wall Street Journal Law blog had this to say:

Jones Day litigation partner Mark Hermann has penned a well-written and clear guide on how to be an effective law-firm associate. It’s also funny: Hermann writes as The Curmudgeon, a grizzled law-firm partner who has zero tolerance for such horrors as the passive voice, long string cites and sloppy billing records. Were this material covered in some big-firm internal handbook, it would surely bore us to tears. But Hermann’s cutting wit and lively writing bring to life such painful topics as how to write a brief, how to treat your assistant and how to take a deposition.

The WSJL blog enjoyed the book so much it devoted several subsequent posts to excerpts (see, e.g., here).

Over at the Legal Sanity blog, Arnie Herz calls the book a "very funny and quite practical guidebook for budding and seasoned lawyers."