Books

Non-Sequiturs: 08.10.07

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Ivy Briefs True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student Martha Kimes Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg* This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Chambermaid isn’t the only law-related book that has been published in the past six months. Check out Nicole Black’s enthusiastic review of Ivy Briefs, by Columbia Law School grad Martha Kimes. [Legal Antics]
* Harvard Law School snags Bill Rubenstein, a prominent gay law prof. So why are they keeping it on the down low? [Leonard Link]
* Justice Alito thinks some of his colleagues need to shut their pieholes. We think their first names rhyme with “Beano” and “Even.” [Legal Times via NYM Daily Intelligencer]
* Sarbanes-Oxley: Hot or Not? [DealBreaker]
* More advice for Loyola 2L: If your non-Biglaw job doesn’t pay you enough, try dumpster diving! [ABA Journal]
* Willkie gets sued — and we’re reminded of this lawsuit. State and local governments don’t seem to like Biglaw much these days. [San Diego Union-Tribune]
* Hold the cheese. Or get sued for lots of cheddar. [Charleston Daily Mail]

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Chambermaid: ‘Cause We Know You Want Another Post About This

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Chambermaid 2 Saira Rao Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg(And if you’re REALLY good, we’ll reward you with more Nina Totenberg stories. Ask and you shall receive!)
Another day, another blog post about Chambermaid, the controversial clerkship novel by lawyer-turned-writer Saira Rao. The latest post is by Professor Scott Burris, who clerked for Third Circuit Judge Dolores K. Sloviter — Rao’s former boss, widely rumored to be the basis for the central villain of Chambermaid, the tyrannical Judge Helga Friedman.
But Burris — unlike, say, fellow law prof and ex-Sloviter clerk Mike Rappaport — takes issue with the scuttlebutt equating Sloviter and Friedman:

What I really object to in the whole affair is the way Rao and some of her blogging readers have negotiated the delicate question of Judge Friedman’s correspondence with Judge Sloviter, and the rationale offered in several quarters for “outing” mean judicial bosses….

Aside from a couple of tics, Helga Friendman is not a portrait, nor even a recognizable caricature, of Dolores Sloviter. Hell, I didn’t even recognize Rao’s Center City Philadelphia.

Additional discussion — if this issue doesn’t interest you, just stop reading here — appears after the jump.

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BlawgWorld 2007: The Best of the Blawgosphere

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We’re guessing, from your presence on this site, that you enjoy legal blogs. And you probably like free stuff, too — ’cause who doesn’t?
With that in mind, we’re pleased to join many other fine blogs in announcing the arrival of BlawgWorld 2007 (PDF). This delightful, free eBook collects exemplary posts from 77 leading law-related blogs.
You can download a copy (as a PDF file) by clicking on the graphic or the link below. Enjoy!
BlawgWorld 2007 Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg
BlawgWorld 2007 with TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide (PDF) [TechnoWorld//Peerviews Inc.]

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Chambermaid: For the Record

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Chambermaid 2 Saira Rao Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpgJust a quick follow-up to our recent post about Saira Rao and Chambermaid, her novel about a law clerk’s challenging year clerking for a federal judicial diva. A tipster writes:

I just left a lunch where Saira Rao spoke to the South Asian Bar Association of Delaware, and she clarified something [from the recent Philadelphia Inquirer article].

I believe the article said something to the effect that she was pushed out of Cleary once people found out what her book was about. [Ed. note: Here's the quote from the Inquirer: "[Rao] left her New York law firm, Cleary Gottlieb, in November when the subject of her book became known, and, she said, the firm made her feel unwelcome.”]

According to her, it appears the opposite was true. She mentioned that the firm was actually accommodating to her needs as a writer and essentially created a new position for her so that she could concentrate more on the book. She also said she received two months off to allow her to finish up some edits on the book as well. She actually said she loved the firm and had a wonderful experience…. [Ed. note: For more, see this comment.]

In addition, she also mentioned that the book was recently optioned to be turned into a television series, so be on the lookout. No word yet on how involved she will be beyond the title of “consultant”.

With respect to the account of Rao’s departure from Cleary, our understanding is that the “firm made her feel unwelcome” statement wasn’t based directly on anything said by Rao herself, but reflected the article writer’s interpretation of events.
We love to engage in juicy speculation about workplace departures as much as (if not more than) the next guy. But it’s best when the scuttlebutt is actually accurate.
Update: We have an email in to Carlin Romano, the Philly Inquirer book critic who wrote the article. We’ll let you now if and when we hear back from him.
Lifetime raises Sunday stakes [Variety]
Earlier: Chambermaid: Judge Sloviter Speaks

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Chambermaid: Judge Sloviter Speaks

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Chambermaid 2 Saira Rao Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpgToday is our lucky day in terms of media coverage. In addition to the great WaPo shout-out, Above the Law is also mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer (front page, above the fold).
The article, by Inquirer book critic Carlin Romano, is all about Chambermaid, the highly entertaining debut novel of Saira Rao, loosely based on her clerkship for Judge Dolores Sloviter of the Third Circuit. You’ve probably already read tons of blog posts and articles about this buzz-generating book.
But this piece is different. It includes some choice comments from Judge Sloviter herself — who, until now, has remained silent about her former clerk’s literary endeavors (as far as we know).
More discussion, after the jump.

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Beach Reading: Stephen Carter’s New Novel

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New England White.jpg
Our old professors continue to churn out best-selling fiction. First it was Stephen Carter, our contracts professor, who stunned the publishing world — and the YLS faculty — with a $4 million advance for his first thriller, The Emperor of Ocean Park.
Then our con law professor, Jed Rubenfeld, came out with a novel of his own, the creepy psychological thriller The Interpretation of Murder. (Above the Law did a post on the Rubenfeld book here.)
Now Stephen Carter is back with his second novel, New England White.
The New York Times gives it an approving review and offers us a taste of the plot:

The whiteness that appalls in Stephen L. Carter’s stylishly written new novel, “New England White,” is only partly the snow, which sifts through the “Gothic sprawl” of the university campus in “grimy, dilapidated” Elm Harbor in the late fall of 2003. In a coy author’s note we are assured that Elm Harbor is “not a thinly disguised New Haven,” so the unnamed university is presumably not a thinly disguised Yale, where Carter — author of a previous best-selling thriller, “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” as well as highly regarded books on the pitfalls of affirmative action and the proper place of religion in public life — has taught in the law school since 1982.
For Lemaster Carlyle, president of the university, the “heart of whiteness” is the creepy bedroom community of Tyler’s Landing, population 3,000, of whom five families, including the Carlyles, happen to be black. In the Landing, as it is called, Lemaster and his wife, Julia, a deputy dean of the divinity school, live in an ostentatious house with their two daughters, Vanessa (“16 going on 50”) and Jeannie, and “a smelly feline mutt” named Rainbow Coalition. Lemaster’s college roommate, now president of the United States (“the big president”) and up for re-election, sometimes calls to chat. To their envious neighbors on Hunter’s Meadow Road, “where the houses stood continents apart,” the Carlyles seem to have it all. But those “invisible spheres” Melville mentioned are about to crack the veneer of their seemingly perfect lives.

Sounds intriguing. We enjoyed The Emperor of Ocean Park until the end, which we didn’t think lived up to the suspense Carter masterfully built up throughout the rest of the book (Note to Professor Carter: We’re giving you more feedback here than you gave us on that contracts exam).

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Judicial Clerkships From Hell: Submissions, Please

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Dolores Sloviter Judge Dolores K Sloviter Chambermaid Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpgCheck out the woman at right. She is the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter, and she sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Judge Sloviter seems like a kindly old lady, doesn’t she? We’ve seen her on the bench, at multiple oral arguments. Based on her grandmotherly appearance, we once quipped to a colleague: “She seems so nice! When is she going to descend from the bench and feed us homemade cookies?”
Answer: not anytime soon (unless the cookies are laced with arsenic). From one of Judge Sloviter’s former clerks, Professor Mike Rappaport:

In 1985, having just graduated from law school, I arrived for my first day of work as a law clerk to Dolores K. Sloviter of the Third Circuit….

My two co-clerks, who had arrived a week earlier, took me to lunch. I asked how things were going, and they looked kind of uncomfortable. They explained that on their first day, a week earlier, they had gone to lunch with the holdover clerk, and had asked her, almost making small talk, how her year had been. [T]hey listened as she spent the next hour and a half detailing the horrors of the experience, and how she wasn’t sure how she had gotten through it.

That law clerk’s year of hell turned out to be quite similar to our year….

(That’s just an excerpt. You can read the entire post by clicking here.)
But should any of this come as a surprise? As regular ATL readers surely recall, Dolores Sloviter is the alleged inspiration for the nightmarish Judge Helga Friedman, central villain of Saira Rao’s delightful new novel, Chambermaid.
Additional thoughts on hellacious clerkships, plus a call for reader tips, after the jump.

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Judge Robert E. Keeton, R.I.P.

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Robert Keeton Judge Robert E Keeton Abovethelaw Above the Law legal blog.jpgThe Honorable Robert E. Keeton, of the District of Massachusetts, passed away earlier this week. Judge Keeton was a Harvard Law School professor, a World War II hero, and an editor of the classic Prosser & Keeton on Torts.
Update: As noted in the comments, Judge Keeton’s brother, Werdner Page Keeton, was the lead Keeton on the book.
Judge Keeton liked to tell funny stories during his weekly chambers meetings. From the Boston Globe:

He particularly enjoyed telling about the time his mother-in-law came to his house and made biscuits.

“She went into the cabinet and she took out what she thought was flour,” [judicial assistant Lily] Diblasi said. “She made biscuits and put them on the table with all the other fixings. The judge took a bite and said, ‘Mother, these biscuits are quite good but where did you find the flour to make them?’ It turned out to be wall paper paste. . . But he graciously ate it.”

(Moral of the story: Keep your mother-in-law away from the kitchen.)
Our sympathies go out to Judge Keeton’s family, and to his extended family of judicial colleagues and former law clerks.
Robert E. Keeton, 88, judge, professor, author, war hero [Boston Globe]
Robert E. Keeton, pioneer of insurance law and District Court judge: 1919-2007 [Harvard Law School]

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  • 22 Jun 2007 at 11:48 AM
  • Books

PrawfsBlawg Trashes Chambermaid

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Chambermaid 2 Saira Rao Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg
James Gimmelman at PrawfsBlawg is none too impressed with Saira Rao’s roman a clef Chambermaid. From his review:

The book is an abomination, one of the worst novels I have ever read, both artistically and morally. The affected style, which runs the gamut from “cutesy” to “bench memo,” would be forgivable if the substance weren’t so dreadful.

Don’t hold back, James. Tell us what you really think.
He accuses Rao of making much ado about nothing:

But as the novel progresses, something odd happens. The character assassination against Judge Friedman becomes just too much. Raj’s life is pretty good, all things considered. Her hours aren’t particularly bad as clerkship hours go, the work itself is interesting enough, and while she may or may not get that dream job with the ACLU, even she acknowledges that it would be a rare accomplishment to land it. Her family loves and supports her; she always has at least one good friend nearby; she’s never threatened with any serious corruption of her values. Nor, beyond living in a slightly skeevy neighborhood, does she ever risk forfeiting her educational, economic, and social privilege. The indignities of life in Friedman’s chambers come to seem like just so much white noise, nothing one couldn’t endure for a year with a half-grin and a lot of shrugs. Which, actually, is more or less what Raj does.

We haven’t read it yet (maybe Lat will give us one of the three copies he’s gonna get for finishing in second place in the Funniest Law Blog contest; more on that later today), but we understand Lat is looking to do a review of his own (see earlier discussion of that here), so it will be interesting to get his take. Lat, of course, has unique experience in exposing the inner workings of a judge’s office.

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Some Third Circuit Scuttlebutt

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Judicial junkies, here are two quick items about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit:
Chambermaid 2 Saira Rao Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg1. New Novel. The eagerly anticipated Chambermaid — a roman a clef novel set in the Third Circuit by Saira Rao, a former law clerk to the totally terrifying Judge Dolores Sloviter (3d Cir.) — is now in bookstores. It has arrived a few weeks ahead of its original publication date of July 10. Our earlier discussion appears here.
A very interesting interview with Saira Rao, followed by a comments clusterf**k lively reader discussion, appears at the WSJ Law Blog.
We recently read Chambermaid, which we thoroughly enjoyed. We’ll probably review it in the near future, either here at ATL or for a print publication.
(Shameless plug: If you’re an editor in need of a book review, please email us.)
Law Blog Q&A: Saira Rao [WSJ Law Blog]
Chambermaid by Saira Rao [official website]
Earlier: A ‘Devil Wears Prada’ for the Law Clerk Set
Shalom Stone Shalom D Stone Third Circuit Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpg2. New Nominee. After Judge Noel Hillman (D.N.J.) was mysteriously pulled as the presumptive nominee for Justice Samuel Alito’s former Third Circuit seat, we wondered: What’s up with that Third Circuit seat?
Now we know (or think we do). According to media reports, the likely new nominee is Shalom Stone (at right). Here’s a brief bio:

Stone, a former chairman of a state bar committee on federal practice and procedure who handles a wide swath of issues, including insurance, RICO, real estate and ethics, has been practicing for 20 years. He’s now a partner at the Roseland firm of Walder Hayden and Brogan.

More discussion, after the jump.

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