Happy Hour is for Amateurs by Philadelphia Lawyer

2 stars out of 5

As a former lawyer myself, I was interested to see what Philadelphia Lawyer had to say about his 10 years as a lawyer. I anticipated and enjoyed many of the complaints: long hours, inefficient practices, anal personalities. I also enjoyed many of his stories, including his numerous job changes, trials and other confrontations - these were very amusing and revealing.

However, to get to the gems, you have to slog through so many pages of his misadventures as to make the trip not worth it. If you enjoy National Inquirer and/or stories about booze, women, drugs, sex and bathroom exploits, then you will enjoy Philadelphia Lawyer's many sidebars. Wild weekends with women and drugs appear to be his coping mechanism for being a lawyer. It is telling that he remains anonymous, even after leaving the field of law. I imagine some of this is because he doesn't want to be sued by the real life people he put in the book, but a big part of it is that no one could respect him after hearing of his many exploits.

Also, the writing style is more stream of consciousness (complete with lots of explicatives) than anything else. Thie format works well for blogs (on which this book is based), but over the course of a 300-page book it gets old.

There were some enjoyable parts, but I found too many distasteful elements to make reading this book worth it.