Books, Law Schools

Fast Times At Fake Law School

The Curve satirizes the state of lower-tier legal education.

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The Curve Image (1)Ed. note: All links to books mentioned below are affiliate links.

“How ethical is a system that teaches students to do a job that doesn’t exist?” This question, posed by a ruthless law school dean, is at the heart of The Curve, a new satirical novel from Jeremy Blachman (Anonymous Lawyer) and Cameron Stracher (Double Billing). This “system” is the education on offer at what were once known as “TTT” law schools. In the fictional world of The Curve, it is a place called Manhattan Law School which is that category’s grotesque exemplar.

Manhattan Law School is located, of course, in Brooklyn, on the banks of a lethally noxious Gowanus Canal. The school has “leveraged its Superfund credits to pay for professors, chairs, and free popcorn at every other faculty meeting.” Its mouth-breathing student body “should have known better, but didn’t.” Despite their insurmountable debt loads and grim job prospects, the typical Manhattan Law student still manages to balance a massive sense of entitlement with a profound incuriosity. All the while with the fashion sense of a “hooker, stripper, or minor league baseball player.” (One has to wonder: what will Professor Stracher’s students at, ahem, New York Law School make of this?) Anyway, The Paper Chase this ain’t.

The answer to that initial question about ethics is obviously “not very,” and that actually serves as a rationale for MLS to muddle along, by any means necessary. If you think the students are bad, the administration is cynical and corrupt to a degree that would scandalize an Afghan government ministry. To the powers-that-be of MLS, “the inadequate services, shabby facilities maintenance, and rote course materials [are] pure financial wizardry.” This is the lower-tier law school as a straight-up Ponzi scheme.

Into this moral and aesthetic morass stumbles The Curve’s sort-of hero, Adam Wright. Wright has left his prestigious but soulless Biglaw gig for the more authentic and fulfilling prospect of teaching Torts to students who will never have any interest in Torts. Wright: oh so wrong.

There’s a plot, mostly concerning a grades-for-sale scheme abetted by the desperate lackwits who staff the MLS Law Review. There is also a love affair, a psychotic breakdown, academic infighting, and a lecherous and gluttonous Biglaw partner who just about steals the show with his unrelenting repulsiveness. The knowing reader will recognize spoofs of — or nods to — much in the real world, ranging from the depredations of InfiLaw to ATL’s own beloved “Aquagirl.”

However the real delights of The Curve are its sharp little ironies and asides. The book is full of details that make you laugh out loud at their inspired absurdity. A standout is one of the many fake documents interspersing the book’s chapters, an agenda for a New York Bar Association conference, “Law Schools in the 21st Century,” featuring panel discussions on “What is Facebook?” and “Finding Adjunct Faculty in the Third World.”

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The Curve is hilarious and highly recommended, especially if you are, or love, some poor sucker treading water in the toxic canal of our legal education system.

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