Wow, great story!

Hey, that was beautiful man.

Love your stuff.

Great post

It does speak to people...lots of people. I'm sitting in a sales office it always translates no matter what. Keep up the good work.

PL: "Lots" is an important term when you have a book coming out. I'll think positively and take you literally there.

to add a touch of flare to the foreword of your upcoming book, you should/could put a copy of the brief that you were writing, when the idea for the website(which gave you the idea for the book) came to you, kinda like a symbol for the straw that broke the camel's back. I'd also be very interested to see your legal/verbal gymnastics. You can take out the names and addresses of all involved, attorney client privelage and whatnot, but still as a fan I'd like to see it

PL: There were many straws. Many. And it was dull shit. It was all such dull shit with those types of claims.

Are you with the same girlfriend or wife that you were with before you started writing this blog? You mentioned before that writing has been a way to meld the two people, the different personalities together, ie. the work you and the weekend you. How has this melding affected your relationships? Do your friends and family see you differently?

PL: Yes. I've always been fairly normal, like most of the people experiencing the things written about here. The most innocuous and simultaneously salacious facet of the observations and descriptions here is the fact that generally these are not terribly uncommon thoughts and experiences.

We all have nasty habits. We just can't admit them. The surface machines run on the myth we're all above what most of us actually are. It's amusing to watch technology start taking all of that apart. In some ways it's refreshing. In some ways it's unfortunate. The more it becomes apparent that we're all a good bit further from than closer to the ideal we'd like people to see the more we lose some of the romance in our interactions. I think there will be a day where relativism and pragmatic acceptance will overrule judgmental thinking and generally that will be a good thing. But it will also take away one of the most interesting things about people's personalities - their ability to be confusing, grey and elusive. When we all start admitting we're as flawed as we are and stop judging one another there also won't be any more guilty pleasures or subversive kicks. Kind of takes a little fun out of things, even if it will be a more honest society.

Hey Page, just make sure you remember sometimes the earlier takes may be more raw but they're a lot better. Kinda like that heartbreaker solo I keep comparing you to. I think that was a 2nd or 3rd take.

Remember what built up your cult following in those first few months.. from what it sounds like you "just started typing, exactly what I was thinking."

It wasn't the endless edits, changes, for example taking out that "automatic" in your DC lipstick story.

Having seen your original posts, as well as the heavy revision, I typically/generally prefer your earlier drafts. They speak more and overall just are much better.

Keep it up; looking forward to the book.

PL: Thanks. But I used the automatic nicely elsewhere. She's come up several times in life. That's why she works. You recognize her because you've met her yourself, so you know how malleable that description can be.

Highly anticipating the book.

And I appreciate the fact that you care about probably just about every single comment someone leaves.

Congratulations, you've made it out alive, it seems.

PL: Thanks and thanks for the support. I am trying my best.

Brother, you are in the wrong area of law. If you want that feeling, that sense of wow they like me, they really like me, get into serious criminal defense. Having a family hug you when the jury comes in with a not guilty, nothing like it, not gambling, not some S.J. motion or a heated motion in limine...only problem is you have to deal with coke dealers, pedaphiles and general shitbags. Keep up the good work.

PL: Without giving anything away, let's just say I understand your point. You will never hear me criticize a criminal defense lawyer.

Page,

Hopefully you didn't miss my point. Not too concerned about where you use the automatic, just don't overprocess and edit to death the stories.

Keep up the great work.

PL: I understood you. Just offering a point I thought needed to be made.

As an attorney myself, I can completely feel your pain - and frankly have had that cathartic moment myself - why am I doing this, is this REALLY why I became a lawyer. In general though I do get satisfaction from being a lawyer, although my practice is transactional work for small business owners. I get such a rush from doing it (most of the time), because I actually feel that I am helping people and making a positive contribution to society. I could never be a litigator, and completely understand why you hated it so much (I have read and written the exact brief that you were writing at the time). I know many litigators and I cannot figure out how they do not shoot themselves from the work - especially insurance defense.

I agree with the other posts - your work speaks to me as it does to many people. I discovered the site when I was in a dark place at another firm and it gave me something to look forward to during the days. I - and EVERYONE who practices does to - know all of the various partners, clients, etc. that you describe. Very well done site and I am waiting on pins and needles for the book to come out. Keep up the good work.

PL: That some people do get satisfaction from the job is why I chose not to shred it in a whiny fashion in the book. The book is light because, as I'm sure you've noticed, the reason I hate litigation is partly my fault. I selected into a business full of assholes and as I've admitted many times, there have been several times in my career when I was an arch asshole. Luckily, I always had an eye toward keeping my personality and never letting the job take over.

I choose not to whine so much about the business as savage it - make fun of the insecurities and ego gymnastics and atrocious personalities that define it in a place like Philadelphia.

I have no problems with deal lawyers or criminal defense lawyers. The litigators who make life hard on everybody else and take themselves seriously deserve to be made fun of daily, constantly reminded they are buffoons. I guess I'm stuck doing that because for some reason all the decent litigators I know let the assholes run all over them. The fact is, there will always be things I love about the practice, but we do a terrible job of self-policing in the field. We allow the worst of the worst to run amuck in it, destroying what was once a respectable endeavor. It's our fault for making the business such a cesspool in places like Philadelphia. The decent of us haven't stood up to or even made fun of shysters, miscreants and degenerates who pollute the job and I just don't know why. It could be so much better for everyone.

Perhaps all the associates should go on strike. The margins are so thin most of the firms - of all sizes - would all but default on their credit lines within sixty days. Maybe that would be the cleansing the business needs.

Just another random reader stopping by to voice some support. As one of the thousands upon thousands of college students chasing one pipe dream or another, your writing resonates with me. Every field has its own specially tailored Job (not to be confused with "a job") which seems quite attractive thanks to the amount of advertisement the Job gets. And good god, how many empty suits can you remember running into in college? Sure, I haven't truly met one in the flesh, but I swear I can watch the transformation taking place in the classroom for plenty of individuals chasing after the Job.

Having said that, your writing does give me at least one hope. It may take a little bit of digging, but there are 10 percenters everywhere.

PL: The only advice I can add is find what you want to do young. That knowledge at 24 is worth ten times it's value at 34. If you need to travel or try a few different things to find the direction, do it young and try everything you want to. When some asshole down the road who's taken the "safety" route tells you your resume looks disjointed tell him you wanted to be sure, and you wanted to be well rounded before you jumped into any one thing.

The goal is to have as many experiences in life as you can. I think most Americans think you need to work like mad, make a ton of money and then do that. Generally, that's got some truth to it. However, you can also find it by paring down your expenses, not taking on huge amounts of debt and just going out and doing what you want to do where you want to do it. A man with no loans on him has no boundaries.

Hell, if you're willing to go off the grid, a man with millions in loans has no boundaries on him. All he needs to know is the foreign tongue of country with a budding economy.

You always have options if you think of yourself in terms of maximizing enjoyment of the finite years you have instead of being imprisoned by the systems you think control your life. They only control you to the extent you let them.

I've been reading for awhile and this seemed like the right page to say this: I truly enjoy your writing. I started out with Tucker's stuff and when I finished I eventually found my way over to your site. I have to say it is truly well-crafted. Reading Tucker is like reading a magazine or an e-mail from a friend; it's quick, light, and fun. (And I don't mean that in a critical way towards him at all, I think if he didn't record his stories like that they wouldn't translate as humorously). However, when I started to read your stuff, it reminded me of Bunny's writing -- I couldn't casually skim it late at night before bed and truly get the gist of it. I've had to carve out time and devote my full attention to your posts. Your writing to me is so fluid and prose like. Every story floats and moves from one detail to the next, even with the added twists. I also notice that most of the things you write really resonate with me. I read something and go, 'he gets it; he was able to put into words exactly what that feels like/meant' To me, good writing can invoke emotion in the reader whether they've experienced your topic firsthand or not. I think that is one of the hardest traits for writers to truly get a handle on and you've captured it perfectly. I don't have to be a lawyer,or even in a professional career to understand exactly what you are speaking about.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you how lovely you're writing is and that I am eagerly anticipating the book. Also, thanks to you, I've fully embraced classic rock.

PL: Thank you. I think the emotion derives from the simple fact that I'm writing about universal themes we all understand - things we feel every day.

Life would be unlivable without classic rock and whiskey.

Just wanted to say thanks for all of the entertainment and enlightenment I get from your writing. My wife has become even more supportive of my dreams (attempting to get into a crazy competitive field of medicine, because it's my passion) because of her own epiphanies related to her legal education and experience as an attorney.

After finishing law school and dabbling in private practice, she said to me: "I will never do anything for money alone, it's just not worth it. Go for it [certian residency], because it's what will make you happy." It sounds trite, but that sour taste of ignoring her moral compass in litigation led her to believe that the satisfaction in your job/life, is more important than the paycheck.

PL: Stick with that woman, no matter what. You're a lucky man.

This seems to be the post where everybody shows their appreciation as well as their desire to agree with you. I like your writing. My take is that you divide the world in half. Characters who notice this division are heroes and those who don't villains. The formula is solid and the lawyer theme entertaining. But, it gets old. I'm talking about the frozenness. You turn into Zach Morris and request a 'time out' where the world stands still for you to dissect in logic. This is a problem. It's unfair. You bring all these cold carcasses to justice never turning that logic against yourself or itself. What made you see the world this way? What gave you a stronger sense of integrity or sensibility in a "saccharine" world? Is it distorted? Are you resentful? I understand unfairness is a childish complaint. The more pragmatic one is that following this process (the laws of your own logical universe) your character - the lens we all rely on - might become a stereotype. Another guy we have all met if we have worked in a law firm. A blogger of sorts who rants about everything that is wrong, a self-made-wikipedia-expert. Writers never really do anything. That's why they write, some would say.

PL: I don't give you the answer. I only give you entertainment and ask you to think. Or not think. You can just as easily enjoy my writing as barbaric, sophomoric humor as focus on the concepts I raise.

The answer to your suggestion I am the mere office sage or know it all is, "Well, I wrote it and somebody wanted to read it." You'd have to ask the audience whether it's fair or unfair. And I have done something, I'd say. I've created a body of writing, good or bad, that people have read. I've also been paid for it and jumped into an at times frightening and exhilarating experience.

As to whether I should explain why I have reached certain conclusions about the comic futility of a lot of what goes on in the workplace, I have. One need only paint the picture. My personal securities and insecurities are insignificant. I am insignificant. The observations are universal and more important than allowing the reader to get the "emotional porn" of mine or anyone else's private neuroses. My points are all based on simple logic. Anyone could come to them.

Unfairness is a vacant, largely illusory concept. It's a catch-all excuse. There's the situation and how you deal with it. Whether it's fair or not is immaterial. Could I have spent my years whining about law around the office as so many unhappy lawyers do? Sure. But why not make something of the criticisms, and why not bring laughs and amusement to people in the process?

And generally, regarding the suggestion law is "doing something" and writing not, pushing legal paper's absurdly easy in comparison to writing.

If I might ask you a question, consider this... If you can get paid to shut your mouth and work and that is doing something, how is getting paid to make fun of that situation any different? I'm just another capitalist, aren't I? The notion one endeavor is more noble or honest than the other is illogic... I'd liken it to Republicans who call unions anti-capitalist. Capitalism is finding a way to get paid. Union workers leverage their only resource to claw maximum income from management which uses its economic power maximize the benefit of its bargain with the workers. Both are capitalists and both "do something."

By the way, how would one analyze a situation without freezing it? Writing is slicing situations to demonstrate certain points. To question whether that process is fair or not is to put the whole concept of writing on trial.

Or I could contextualize. Reading your stuff from a post-colonial indigenous perspective gives your writing a hilarious twist. In all seriousness, you make me think and it is always entertaining.

My idea of unfairness had little to do with how you judge the world, but how you never turned that ability on yourself. Volumes and tomes on how some girls are brought up to fuck for status and the pleasures of getting away with drunk driving and not a word about how that affected you or why. Nothing.

What would you have seen had you met another you? An Ortega y Gasset wannabe?

I don't think you are insignificant. You are a character in your stories. Look, you don't have to pretend to be talking to a shrink, but there are many ways - and this is probably what's most difficult to writers - to inner analysis. Bolano is very good at showing himself while escaping the romantic novel scent you seem to dislike. Here is a good example: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/08/04/080804fi_fiction_bolano?currentPage=all

I think you use logic as a literary device very well. It's the thing to do in a culture that agrees in cannibalizing old myths and values. Just be aware that some sustain that logic is anthropological and not universal as it is taught in class through repetition, rhetoric, turning it into a super myth.

The misunderstanding I want to clear up is that I never intended to say you were doing nothing by writing. It is something and you are good at it whether it pays the bills or not. The real meaning of the sentence "writers don't really do anything" is that no matter how many points you make about the miserable existence the ignorant majority lives in, you are just a pressure valve and they are too dumb to care.

It's a Mencken line.

I'll stay away from the capitalism paragraph.

You can analyze a situation without freezing it through unstructured writing. Not to be confused with magical realism or structure in disguise. I can't really summon an example in English. Here is an example in Spanish written by a philologist (sorry): http://www.piedepagina.com/redux/13/06/2008/alumbramiento/

I really enjoy your site. I hope you sell lots of books and become as successful in America as Houellebecq is in France.

PL: Thanks. I didn't take your criticism to be one harshly made, by the way. Your questions are well placed and hit on something many people fault in my stuff - lack of emotion or self-consideration in the narrator.

To answer in short, I always felt that the story was broader and bigger than me. I also find self-exposition a bit distasteful. The fixation in our culture with "reality entertainment" wherein people break down or expose their innermost thoughts (often their least interesting) gives me gas. Secondarily, the thrust of my writing has always been unapologetic. I am a white male born into a decent upbringing. It wasn't bad and I haven't struggled horribly and for that reason the last thing I wanted to write was some awful tome about my inner demons. They're there, as they are with all of us, but I'd be boiled in oil before I wrote some goddamned misery memoir like all these people penning books about rehab and redemption (except for "Night of the Gun," which is shockingly candid and deserves considerable applause for the author's repeated admissions that he was a king fuck-up who deserves none of the luck he's had in life post-addiction). Americans are so married to this notion of an "arc" in what they read - some narrative that reinforces their ideals or makes them feel better about themselves. Were I writing in Spain or Amsterdam, perhaps I'd offer more self-analysis, but given the "middle mind" that fills out so much of the American audience, writing as a humorist/satirist I don't want to invite certain readers to view anything I've written as a struggle or vicariously vent their neuroses through my work. I want them to, as you astutely note, recognize the logic of what I'm saying. Simply, is there anything more effective, logically, than this statement:

"Your only currency is the time you have on this planet and when you waste massive amounts of it doing something you don't like you're giving away your only irreplaceable resource, and there is no logic in that at all."

What "emotional painting" could add to the gravity of that simple, irrefutable reality? Anything added in that regard would wind up detracting from the strength of its simplicity.

I think I am here to ask questions, not answer them.

But to answer you in depth, because your question does deserve the response, I think my self-analysis is evident on every page. The flaws of character are endless, the weaknesses and vulnerabilities worn on the sleeve. In every barbaric piece of comedy there's a fundamental loneliness, the disconnectedness that haunts anyone compelled to write about what he sees. As I've said a thousand times before, I wish I'd never had the urge to write things down. It'd be so much easier to jump into the tribe and just roll with it. And I still might do that... One thing I've learned in this writing endeavor is that on some levels, being two people - one at work, one in life - is underrated. I mean, in the end, the bastards who run the big machines will always find a way to monetize what you're doing, and what's monetized is automatically 20% less fun than it was before.

I'm curious -- have you been following this guy? http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/08/18/cursing-clients-lawyer-unable-to-get-sanctions-lifted/

In other news, after much experimentation, I find that Knob Creek really does make the best Manhattans. Oh, sure, Maker's is fine, and Jack Daniels (yes, bourbon timmies, I know that it ain't a bourbon because it's from Tennessee) is surprisingly good. But that extra kick of proof found in Knob Creek works best, imo.

I still need to try Wild Turkey 101 to confirm, but think that that stuff is best consumed straight from a bottle handed to you by a blonde in a halter top and a old Levis at a Molly Hatchet concert, so I'm unlikely to waste it on a Manhattan.

PL: I had a guy threaten to throw me off a balcony once for refusing to recognize that Molly Hatchet's version of "Dreams" was better than the Allman Brothers'. Haven't dared listen to them since. Bad memories...

Try Woodford Reserve. Hints of ginger and citrus, but not as bitter as Maker's can be sometimes. I think it's better than Bookers, Bakers, Blantons and all the rest of them.

As to that piece you cited, the lawyer's conduct must have been pretty lousy in other areas of the case. Robreno can be harsh, but he's a fair guy and is generally a pretty patient jurist. This lawyer had to have pushed his buttons in some other regard during this case or been so cavalier in his initial response to the threat of sanctions that Robreno felt the need to send a message.

The client will pick up the whole tab anyway, directly or indirectly.

can you make a post about all the straws that broke the camel's back? this brief, some asshole who stole the credit you rightly deserved, etc. i think it'd make for good therapy to let out a rant that motivated you, some people could relate and be inspired. Just a suggestion from a fan.

PL: I've done that at considerable length in so many places already. I just don't have the complaints in me anymore and frankly, I'd rather focus on the solution than sympathizing with people. I appreciate and understand your desire, but the better focus is the positive one - what you do to get out. Fixating on the agony really doesn't get anybody anywhere and psychologically, I'm not there anymore.

Think about escape. Focus on that, not the anger about the situation. I wasted so many years doing that and trust me on this - it doesn't help.

You'll be inspired by the book. Trust me on that.

Been looking forward to the book for awhile. Being a Philly native myself, I was curious how deep your distaste, or cynicism, of the city is. I know the city has many absurd tics to it (Milton [or any for that matter] Street anyone?) but I knew I wanted to come back here after college as it seems you did. I also know we tend to get defensive about our turf because we're not as financially established as New York and because Washington took the political mantle from us long ago, and that's not the angle I'm coming from, I was just interested in your disaffection, yet simultaneous pursuit of a career in law here. On an unrelated note, you ever go to Mantra?

PL: It's not a bad city, but it's narrow, aggressive, angry and quite provincial. Mostly the things you've already suggested.

I wound up in Philly by odd happenstance and the fact that I didn't have the guts to try to make it in NYC. I really wanted to be in DC or New York, but I didn't put in the effort to do that. I settled for Philadelphia. No regrets. It blessed me with my wife, the best thing I have. But it is a reminder of that old sage advice - "You get what you pay for" and "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

It's a decent place, but it's not prime time.

No. Don't go to Mantra.