Several people wrote to tell me Anonymous Lawyer has been unmasked in the NY Times as a Harvard 3L named Jeremy Blachman. Thank you for confirming my prediction. If you didn't believe that lawyers can be world-class whiners, I enter the following as evidence:

"I've turned down the opportunity to make having gone to law school make sense," he wrote last month, announcing that he had passed on a $125,000/yr job offer from the Manhattan firm. "The law doesn't inspire me," he wrote, adding that he had had to wrestle with his fear that his yearning for fulfilling work was a "stupid, childish fairy tale."

"Look, I want to write," he went on. He said that after graduation in June he might move to Los Angeles and look for work writing for television. "I could possibly write for a law show, given my legal education," he said.

It's so perfect in its world-weary entitlement that I would almost be persuaded that Jeremy Blachman is fictitious, but alas I fear he is not. Dear Jeremy: everyone in LA county who read the article knows that "move to LA and look for work writing" is 20-something code for "spend another 5-10 yrs living off my parents".

Statements like "the law doesn't inspire me" are the work of a limp, uncurious mind. The law is a huge, huge field. Pretty much any topic a human being could be interested in has a legal angle that can be mined for fun & profit. I think really what young lawyers mean when they say that is -- "I didn't know I'd have to work so hard to earn that top-tier salary. [long sigh]"

29 Dec 04