In Double Billing, author Cameron Stracher puts the legal profession on trial and finds it guilty of waste, fraud, and other offenses. Stracher has based his inside account on three punishing years as a young associate at a New York City law firm, given the fictional name Crowley and Cavanaugh. With everyone facing nearly impossible odds to become partner, there are no lawyers in love at Stracher's firm--only lawyers at war. The lifeblood at C & C is "the billable hour." Even a first-year associate costs clients $150 an hour. What's more, there's little desire to save money. "The longer C & C fought on behalf of a client, the more C & C was paid," he soon learns.

There is no literal double billing, but it comes close. Clients sometimes pay twice for virtually the same service--once by the associate and then again by the partners. Every associate's memo is revised by a partner, for example. Two corporate combatants often pay their respective attorneys outrageous fees to research and argue the same, narrow points of law. The outcome is rarely in doubt.

Stracher's young lawyers are ambivalent and cynical--there are no illusions in the courtrooms of Generation X. "Today, law students have nothing but doubts: about the nobility of their chosen profession, about their interest in it and about its interest in them," he writes. Say goodbye to the idealism of John Osborn's The Paper Chase. So much for the committed bunch in Scott Turow's One L. Double Billing is a great read if you're thinking of becoming a lawyer or if you work with lawyers. It will no doubt change the way you think about our system of justice.


From Publishers Weekly
In the cautionary tradition of John J. Osborn's Paper Chase and Scott Turow's One L comes this engaging account of a Harvard Law graduate's disastrous entr?e into big-firm litigation. Drawing on both his own experience and interviews with other associates, Stracher (The Laws of Return) creates a "composite" portrait of a white-shoe New York practice he dubs "Cavanaugh & Crowley." For Stracher, life at "C&C" is round-the-clock "make-work," a dehumanizing marathon of superfluous research assignments and mindless clerical tasks relieved by late night Chinese takeout. Not only is the work tedious, it's also lonely: after the bracing Socratic dialogues of law school, he is staggered by the lack of feedback and the overall "coldness of law firm life." In three years of employment, Stracher has only minimal interactions with three partners and three senior associates, and a bantering familiarity with a handful of other young associates consisting mainly of comparing billable hours. His complaint that the work isn't more interesting is intended as an indictment of "C&C," but it also makes for an undramatic story. Readers enticed by the subtitle's promise of "greed, lies [and] sex" may be disappointed: the only dish is a glimpse of a first-year associate embracing a paralegal at the annual Christmas bash, and a secondhand report of a partner who read faxes of a merger agreement during Passover seder. On the other hand, Stracher's characterizations are vivid and humane, his criticisms are convincing and his observations of workaday lawyering are as sharp as the corners of a legal brief. Editor, Claire Wachtel; agent, Lisa Bankoff/ICM. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
What do lawyers do all day (and many nights) to earn the big bucks and the ill-favored reputation? Stracher (The Laws of Return, 1996) answers with an animated description of his life as an overworked, overpaid associate in a big New York firm. Ever since lawyering seemed to change from an honored profession to a tough business, the sole object of the game has been billable hours (read ``huge fees''). Many firms, particularly the big ``white shoe''outfits with major corporate clients, regularly transmute the lives of recently minted lawyers, their associates, into billable hours. Counselor Stracher describes his two years with such a firm (really a composite of several, and representative of many). His own point of view while employed as a biggie was much like that of a hamster on a treadmill: He tells of foolish, wasted, pointless work. But in law, theres no such thing as too much preparation. And if all-nighters were required, it was usually the associates and paralegals who ate cold pizza into the wee hoursoften to support what the author supposed were positions of little merit. Documents, of course, abounded. Lawyer Stracher, in his brief, takes us on a quick tour of the back office, introducing us to quirky colleagues and offering a mini-primer on some black-letter law. Nowhere, though, does he document the unethical practice mentioned in his title. Rather, the mores and manners, foods and fashions of typical swashbuckling lawyers are dissected with skill and humor. Stracher's heart lies in the writer's art, not the art of litigation. He's now an ``in-house'' litigator with a major network, notas lawyers jokean ``out-house'' attorney in a private firm. A jaundiced but eloquent report on laws current habits. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Publishers Weekly
"Stracher's characterizations are vivid and humane, his criticisms are convincing and his observations...are...sharp..."


The American Lawyer
"...may do for associates what Scott Turow's One L did for elite law schools... The book is something else... It's a good read."


John Jay Osborn, San Francisco Chronicle; author of The Paper Chase
"This is a wise, elegant, and quite wonderful book..."


Lisa Scottoline, author of Mistaken Identity
"Stracher is a wonderful writer with a terrific eye and a voice of absolute grace..."


Book Description

By turns hilarious and horrifying, Double Billing is a clever and sobering expose of the legal profession. Writing with wit and wisdom, Cameron Stracher describes the grueling rite of passage of an associate at a major New York law firm. As Stracher describes, Harvard Law School may have taught him to think like a lawyer, but it was his experience as an associate that taught him to behave--or misbehave--like one. Double Billing is a biting glimpse into the world of corporate law from the perspective of the low man on the totem pole.In Double Billing, Cameron Stracher reveals a shocking nonfiction account of the ordeal of a young associate at a major Wall Street law firm. Fresh out of Harvard Law School, Stracher landed a coveted position at a high-powered corporate law firm and thus began his grueling years as an associate, a dreaded rite of passage for every young attorney. Only about five percent survive long enough to achieve the Holy Grail of partnership in the firm.As the author vividly describes, law school may teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it's being an associate that teaches you how to behave like one. Or misbehave. Stracher doesn't mince words about the duplicitous behavior and flagrant practices of many lawyers in his firm, which is one of the premier partnerships in America.In a stylish and witty manner that has earned him comparison to an early Philip Roth, Stracher does for the legal profession what Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker did for the financial industry. The result is a tell-all glimpse into the cutthroat world of corporate law from the perspective of the low man on the totem pole.In Double Billing, Cameron Stracher reveals a shocking nonfiction account of the ordeal of a young associate at a major Wall Street law firm. Fresh out of Harvard Law School, Stracher landed a coveted position at a high-powered corporate law firm and thus began his grueling years as an associate, a dreaded rite of passage for every young attorney. Only about five percent survive long enough to achieve the Holy Grail of partnership in the firm.As the author vividly describes, law school may teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it's being an associate that teaches you how to behave like one. Or misbehave. Stracher doesn't mince words about the duplicitous behavior and flagrant practices of many lawyers in his firm, which is one of the premier partnerships in America.In a stylish and witty manner that has earned him comparison to an early Philip Roth, Stracher does for the legal profession what Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker did for the financial industry. The result is a tell-all glimpse into the cutthroat world of corporate law from the perspective of the low man on the totem pole.


About the Author
Cameron Stracher is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.He is the author of a novel, The Laws of Return, and the recipient of a 1998 fiction fellowsip from the New York Foundation for the Arts.He lives in New York City with his family.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Double Billing, Cameron Stracher reveals a shocking nonfiction account of the ordeal of a young associate at a major Wall Street law firm. Fresh out of Harvard Law School, Stracher landed a coveted position at a high-powered corporate law firm and thus began his grueling years as an associate, a dreaded rite of passage for every young attorney. Only about five percent survive long enough to achieve the Holy Grail of partnership in the firm. As the author vividly describes, law school may teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it's being an associate that teaches you how to behave like one. Or misbehave. Stracher doesn't mince words about the duplicitous behavior and flagrant practices of many lawyers in his firm, which is one of the premier partnerships in America. In a stylish and witty manner that has earned him comparison to an early Philip Roth, Stracher does for the legal profession what Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker did for the financial industry. The result is a tell-all glimpse into the cutthroat world of corporate law from the perspective of the low man on the totem pole.

SYNOPSIS

In Double Billing, Cameron Stracher reveals a shocking nonfiction account of the ordeal of a young associate at a major Wall Street law firm. Fresh out of Harvard Law School, Stracher landed a coveted position at a high-powered corporate law firm and thus began his grueling years as an associate, a dreaded rite of passage for every young attorney. Only about five percent survive long enough to achieve the Holy Grail of partnership in the firm.

As the author vividly describes, law school may teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it's being an associate that teaches you how to behave like one. Or misbehave. Stracher doesn't mince words about the duplicitous behavior and flagrant practices of many lawyers in his firm, which is one of the premier partnerships in America.

In a stylish and witty manner that has earned him comparison to an early Philip Roth, Stracher does for the legal profession what Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker did for the financial industry. The result is a tell-all glimpse into the cutthroat world of corporate law from the perspective of the low man on the totem pole.

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

"If you prefer your lawyering without criminally short skirts and workdays that culminate in impromptu bathroom-stall dance numbers, try this scathingly funny and grim portrait of the legal profession. . . . Double Billing should be required reading for the aspiring rich and shameless."

Aric Press