The Young Lawyer's Jungle Book: A Survival Guide (2nd Edition)

by Thane Josef Messinger

Book Overview

In this survival guide for the new attorney, in-depth advice on law office life, includes how to work with senior attorneys, legal research, memos, drafting, mistakes, grammar, email, workload,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888960191
• ISBN13: 9781888960198
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Fine Print Press, Ltd.
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Information and an Entertianing Read

I am currently a sophomore in college and I picked up this book over the summer. It is full of useful information that will help me plan the next couple years of my life in preparing to be a lawyer. It gives examples of what sorts of thing a young lawyer will encounter. It is extremely informative, very funny, and straightforward. I recommend anyone considering the field of law read this book for a lawyers perspective on the years of law school and beyond.

A helpful book for the new attorney

This book includes solid advice for the new attorney. The problem most new lawyers have is not that they're not smart, but that they don't know what to do, and sometimes even how to behave in a profession setting. I recommend this book to all of our new associates. (Actually, it's quite humorous in parts.) Every one of them has told me that it has helped them in their jobs and in their relationships with senior partners. (One senior partner even told me he was impressed with how much better one associate was behaving. I didn't have the heart to tell him that this book was the reason why.) Strongly recommended.

An excellent book, loaded with good information.

I have found this to be an excellent book on the practice of law. After nearly two years in a medium-sized, boutique law firm, I think the situations and advice of the author are on-point. The book is a bit unconventional, but after a few chapters, I found it well-written and really funny, which makes it a lot easier to digest. I recommend this book to all new lawyers. It has information you won't find anywhere else - including stuff nobody ever mentioned to me - and you might pay a hundred bucks to duplicate it, if you could find a "Senior" lawyer who cared enough to tell you everything written in the book. Five stars - a definite "buy."

The Young Lawyer's Jungle Book is a brilliant book.

I was having problems with work. I never seemed to know what to do, or how to do something right, and I always seemed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Plus, it seemed that I never really knew what I was supposed to be doing. A partner came by my office last Friday and gave me a copy of this book, and asked me to read it. I was very embarrassed, and hid it in my carryall. I was very, very unhappy at work, but I started to read it. I spent all weekend reading it, and ended up reading it three times! This is an amazing book. I now see what I've been doing wrong, and I will change everything I do at the office. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Messinger. I certainly wish you had been one of my professors. I really wish I had known about this book months ago. I recommend it to everyone.

Absolutely the best book available for new lawyers!

I strongly disagree with the comments in the San Antonio review. This book is even MORE valuable for those who will NOT be in big firms. I work in a smaller law office, and the scenarios in the Young Lawyer's Jungle Book could have been taken from a fly on the wall. I see some of the same mistakes described in the book being made all around me. I've caught myself more than a few times before I was about to make a mistake in public. This book is an absolute MUST for EVERY new lawyer. It has advice that applies to small-firm lawyers (and government and public-interest lawyers too) as well as for those in big firms. Indeed, I showed this book to friends, some are in big firms and some in other types of law offices, and they ALL really, really liked it. (Give me my book back, Peter!) I also disagree on the comment about the author's writing style. I kept picking it up and re-reading it, when someone wasn't asking to borrow it. (Don't leave it in your office!) The book is both funny and profound. It's sad that something hilarious is assumed to be inconsequential. Nothing could be further from the truth with this book. Yes, there were parts that I didn't get at first, but on the whole the Young Lawyer's Jungle book manages, sometimes in a single sentence, to make me laugh and to make me think about serious aspects of law practice and professional life, sometimes long after I've read it. I also read Proceed With Caution. It does present a picture of big-firm life (which is not really that much different from better smaller firms, because many firms, like mine, are started by lawyers who were partners in large firms). But Proceed with Caution is not really an advice guide, it's more like a diary. And it's not really in the same league as the Young Lawyer's Jungle Book. This book earns its five stars. If you're not yet finished with college, still in law school, or just started working as a lawyer, ANY type of lawyer, you absolutely, positively MUST read this book.