This week I reviewed Ben Mezrich's book Accidental Billionaires for Las Vegas Weekly.  You can read the whole review HERE, and the first few paragraphs here: 

Even Ben Mezrich’s fiercest critics have to admit, the guy knows how to pick a good story. In 2003 Mezrich grew famous after writing about the MIT blackjack team (Bringing Down the House), and this year he’s found an even bigger story to tell: the creation of Facebook.

Maybe “found” isn’t the right word; the story was up for grabs. But Mezrich was the one who grabbed it, and now he’s reaping the benefits. Kevin Spacey snapped up the movie rights before the author had even completed his first draft. And having read the book, I can see why; The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook—A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal has the makings of a summer blockbuster: swank Silicon Valley parties, gorgeous Ivy League coeds and an unlikely hero: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In Accidental Billionaires, Mezrich reveals that Facebook began as a website that simply allowed Harvard students to vote on which of their female classmates was hottest. According to Mezrich, the first, second and third hottest girls at Harvard all lived together. The last four digits of their room’s phone number were 3-8-2-5 (F-U-C-K). “The Harvard housing office,” explains Mezrich, “was notorious for bizarre little pranks like that. Putting kids with similar names in the same room … there was a Burger and Fries, and at least two Blacks and Whites … Someone probably needed to get fired.”

If you watched The Today Show this morning, you probably noticed weird: I wasn’t on it. I can only assume that not inviting me on to discuss LAWYER BOY was some sort of sick practical joke on the part of The Today Show producers, but to be honest, I didn’t find it very funny.

But speaking of funny, attorney/humorist Kevin Underhill wrote up a review of Lawyer Boy on his blog http://LoweringTheBar.net. Here’s part of it.

“Rick Lax sent me a pre-publication copy of his new book, "Lawyer Boy," which was released today (July 8). After reading it, I first considered hunting him down in order to eliminate further competition in the legal-humor department, but decided instead to post a review of the book.

Hunting people down can be really tiring (unless they are elderly, which this guy is not), and it's expensive to have someone else do it.

This is a very funny book, and that starts with its premise, which is pretty much summarized in the book's first sentence: "I always wanted to be a magician, but my father, a tax lawyer, never considered magic a 'viable career path.'" Neither was political science, which Lax had studied in college. So, really, what other option is there in that situation but law school?

I also majored in "political science" -- which, Lax notes, really doesn't exist -- with a focus on the Soviet Union, which now definitely doesn't exist. My other major was in ancient history, which by definition is the study of things that no longer exist. So, while I was never a magician, my options other than law school were also pretty illusory. Why this kind of background might lead people to legal-humor writing is beyond the scope of this piece, which after all is supposed to be a goddamn book review.

"Lawyer Boy" is, more or less, a memoir of Lax's first year in law school at DePaul University in Chicago. It's a lot more entertaining than that might sound, though, even if you are not a lawyer, because the writing is clear and funny, frequently laugh-out-loud funny. No, not eyebrow-lift or even appreciative-nod funny, but the laugh-out-loud kind.”

You can read the rest on his blog, http://loweringthebar.net.

This is the first official Lawyer Boy review. Hopefully it will set the tone for the rest. Hmm…maybe I shouldn't put the cart before the horse….let me try again: hopefully there will be other reviews, and hopefully they will be similar.

Here goes:

First-time author Lax delivers an entertaining and sometimes zany look at the first year of law school. Although he dreams of being a professional magician, Lax realizes after college that being a lawyer—like his father and most of his relatives (he provides a family tree showing the remarkable number of lawyers who are relatives)—is inevitable. After being accepted into the DePaul School of Law in Chicago, where passenger trains "screamed past the classroom every ten minutes," he finds that the world of torts and criminal law is both like and unlike everything he had imagined. The workload is still brutal—as a professor tells him, "For the next year, the American legal system will be your girlfriend." But Lax's discoveries of what he didn't expect offer fascinating up-to-date insights such as the inevitability of the depression he develops (lawyers "are about four times more likely to experience clinical depression than the general population") and the hard fact that "[l]aw schools don't fail students like they used to. They need the tuition dollars to stay competitive."
(July)

The first LAWYER BOY review comes out on Monday. From Publishers Weekly.

I asked my editor how I’m supposed to prepare for this, and he said that he’d put a horse head in the bed of the PW reviewer assigned to the book.

But what I was really asking was how I’m supposed to prepare myself, emotionally, for this. I mean, when you get a bad review on your memoir, it’s like getting a bad review on your life.