Standard Of Review: 'All The Beautiful People We Once Knew' Skewers Life In Biglaw

This is a unique, funny, and challenging novel about life in Biglaw.

A couple of weeks ago, I complained about the rampant problem of legal novels with boring, generic titles. Not so with the recent All the Beautiful People We Once Knew, the debut novel from shipping attorney Edward Carlson. A poetic title that does not even signify a legal novel? Now that is my kind of title! As for the book itself, All the Beautiful People We Once Knew is a unique, funny, and challenging novel about life in Biglaw.

The novel centers around Stephen Harker, a senior associate at Klingore LLP, a large law firm in New York. Despite being talented and well-regarded as an attorney, Stephen is at a make-or-break point in his career. He will be up for partnership soon and the partners do not believe that he is sufficiently motivated, as his billable hours are routinely lower than the other litigation associates at the firm. However, Stephen has a champion in Robert Fleeger, a brash, foul-mouthed litigation partner. Fleeger is a boorish human being, bragging about his sexual exploits and harassing everyone in sight, including one of the firm’s clients. Stephen and Fleeger frequently represent WorldScore, an insurance behemoth. WorldScore is litigating with Bud Thomas, a veteran and former soldier for a private defense contractor who is suing to receive damages for PTSD allegedly suffered in Afghanistan. Stephen struggles to make Fleeger and the client happy in his handling of the case, and he resorts to sleeping with Fleeger’s separated wife.

Carlson does an excellent job satirizing the world of Biglaw. Stephen is only semi-motivated at work, and he hates the focus on the billable hour. In one memorable paragraph in the beginning of the novel, Stephen imagines filling out his timesheets by describing various work centered around the frequent vulgarities uttered by Fleeger. Stephen also refuses to suck up to Celeste, the WorldScore client representative, despite her frequent flirtation with him.

Stephen is also stuck in his own head, a problem afflicting many litigators. In one scene, Fleeger bails on a court appearance at the last minute, and Stephen has to step in and argue a motion. Although Stephen is successful, he is incensed at Fleeger for what he perceives as unprofessional behavior. But Fleeger correctly points out that Stephen never would have excelled in court if he had time to ruminate about the motion in his head.

Edward J. Carlson (via author website)

Carlson takes aim at worker’s compensation litigation. The novel clearly views Thomas as damaged and deserving of compensation. But Stephen and Fleeger’s job is to deny him the ability to sue in tort for injuries suffered while working for a private defense contractor, as they argue that Thomas is legally required to file a worker’s compensation claim with the Department of Labor. Stephen, although ethically obligated to defend WorldScore to prevent it from paying Thomas, is clearly uneasy with the fact that the law seems to be stacked against Thomas and in favor of mega-companies like WorldScore.

Fleeger is the type of attorney who would probably have been fired or the subject of a lawsuit in many other professions, but as a lawyer, he succeeds because his brash nature is an asset (and he is the go-to attorney for a major firm client). Even though Fleeger’s behavior seems almost too ridiculous to be true at times, I have definitely known of many attorneys who frequently act inappropriately, but nothing happens to them due to their ability to bring in business.

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Stephen and Fleeger frequently attend debaucherous parties thrown by the firm and attended by the firm’s clients. Carlson is clearly going for a Tom Wolfe vibe here, portraying the excess of the top one percent. But while lawyers certainly drink a lot, I do not think that such debauchery at official firm events is as common as portrayed in the novel. This is especially true post-2008. I was in law school during the financial crash, and when I started working as an attorney, I repeatedly heard from others that firm parties were much less debaucherous than they used to be (once attorneys started worrying about losing their jobs).

Readers should also be aware that this is not a typical legal novel. Carlson is an excellent writer, but his creative prose – complete with funny asides and non-sequiturs – is definitely challenging and might frustrate readers who expect the plot to move quickly. And the portions of the novel in which Stephen deals with Fleeger’s ex-wife are much less interesting than those portions regarding Stephen’s life at his firm. I found myself skimming any scene that did not have to do with law. But there is enough satire of Biglaw in All the Beautiful People We Once Knew to make the novel worthwhile. And at the very least, you can judge this book by its title.

(Disclosure:  I received a review copy of this book.)

All the Beautiful People We Once Knew [Amazon (affiliate link)]


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Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.