lawyer boy
Apartment Trash Chute Run: Moldy Soup Pot/Sweaty Underwear Edition
The BAR EXAM is in just THREE DAYS (!), and this will be my last blog post until then so I’ll make it really good. That said, THIS happened to me tonight:
After a 40-minute cardio workout, I got ready to take a shower. But before I hopped in, I decided to wash this pot half full of soup that’d been sitting in my sink for over a week. I’ve been putting it off ‘cause it had green and white foam on it, and, well, I just assumed that if I left it next to the sink for long enough, somebody else would wash it for me. (Live alone, bad plan.)
Because I don’t have a garbage disposal, I decided that I’d toss the contents of the pot down the trash chute, which is just ten feet from my apartment. I put my sweaty underwear (boxer briefs) back on, took the pot to the chute….bumped into the door, which spilled some moldy soup on me…and then threw the rest down the chute. I walked back to my door…and realized that I had locked myself out.
So there I stood, nearly naked, sweaty, holding a still-moldy pot, and locked out.
F#*k.
After a minute or two of freaking out, I knocked on a neighbor’s door. And I don’t know who answered, but I know it wasn’t my neighbor. It was some girl. And after two minutes of awkward conversation, I convinced her to go down to the lobby and get the spare key for me.
HOPEFULLY the bar will go smoother than that. We shall see.
WELL, now that I’m going on a three-day blogging break, I just wanted to say thanks again to all who bought and read Lawyer Boy. If you enjoyed the book or are feeling particularly generous as you read this, it’d be great if you could do these things:
1) Email a friend or two about the book. Or mention it on your facebook/myspace profile. Or your blog. Or maybe get a tattoo of the Lawyer Boy cover on your forehead.
2) Go to Amazon.com and write a review of the book. A handful of jealous guys on the law school web forum LawSchoolDiscussion.com have been encouraging people to write bad reviews of Lawyer Boy on Amazon.com without actually reading the book. (And I implore you not to stoop to that level, only review if you’ve read.)
3) Wish me luck on the bar.
4) Have a great week!
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Lawyer Boy Book Reading Pics
Thanks so much to all who came out to the Lawyer Boy book reading/signing/magic show this week—all 130 (!) of you. Several people have told me that the inscriptions I wrote in their books were illegible.
I have awful handwriting. I get it.
So…in case you were one of those people who got an illegible message, here were some of the more popular ones I wrote. See if the message in your book could be one of these:
“Enjoy!”
“Enjoy the book!”
And, if you are a lawyer, I probably wrote this in your book, “Get ready to defend me when my dad sues for defamation.”
Hope that clears things up.
AND…for those of you who couldn’t make it to the reading, here are some pictures of what you missed:
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Skepticism at the Bookstore
Today I studied for three hours at the Gold Coast Barnes & Noble. Around hour two, I took a break and asked one of the store workers whether I could sign the in-store LAWYER BOY copies. (I’m told that authors do this.)
“This one is your book?” the store clerk asked.
“Yep.”
“Can I see some identification?”
“You’re joking me.”
“I’m not joking you; I have to see identification.”
“There’s a picture of me in the jacket flap.”
The guy looked at the picture, then back to me, then back to the picture, then back to me.
“Let me get you a pen.”
“Wait….do a lot of people come in here asking to sign books they haven’t written?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“So…yes?”
“It’s happened more than once.”
“Have YOU seen it happen?”
“Let’s just say, it’s happened more than once.”
Come on. That’s just crazy. Under what circumstance would somebody do that? I’m skeptical…
IN OTHER NEWS
I’m doing my first of two book readings tomorrow. FRIDAY JULY 11th at 7PM at the BOOK CELLAR in Lincoln Square. (That’s right off the Brown Line Western stop.) If you’ve got nothing else going on, come on by. There’ll be magic tricks and wine. Plus you can meet my dad, Lawyer Man.
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Will you be doing any book
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 08/03/2008 - 02:06.
Will you be doing any book readings in the New York/North Jersey area anytime soon? I stumbled across your book at Barnes and Noble the other evening and haven't been able to put it down since. As a girl considering law school, all I have to say is thank you for this book.
My Plan For Being an Extremely Successful and Famous Author: Day One
Woo! Tomorrow I officially become a legitimate author. St. Martin’s Press is publishing my law school memoir, LAWYER BOY. Here’s what I have planned for the day:
6:00 AM to 11:00 AM: Appear on several network mornings shows (Good Morning America, The Today Show, etc…). These shows haven’t actually expressed any interest in having me as a guest, but let’s just say, tonight, when I fall asleep, I plan on leaving my cell ringer on.
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM: Foie gras medallions and with the mayor.
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM: Oprah taping. (Attending as an audience member, but planning to throw copies of my book on stage.)
4:00 PM to 10:00 PM: Field apologetic/remorseful phone calls for every girl who’s ever rejected me.
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Let me be the first to
Submitted by Rachel (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 12:47.
Let me be the first to say:
Congratulations!!!
It's been a long time coming. Maybe I'll stalk the aisles of Barnes & Noble here in New York and do some of my own Lawyer Boy publicity.
Let me also be the first to express my regret. In college, you asked me out after Acting 101 and I said no. And even though we became fast friends, today I'd trade it all in for a chance to switch that monosyllable-word reply to a "yes."
Son of a.
Congrats again.
You should tape every
Submitted by Steve Pirates (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 16:14.
You should tape every morning show, daytime talk show, and late night show that airs today.
Then, you should do that Forrest Gump digital insertion thing, and make it look like you were in all of them. Your kids and grandkids will never know. I can see the dialog now:
Matt Lauer: "So, Dr. Sorenson, you're saying that polar bears are sick of global warming and are starting a cult that uses human sacrifices to cool the earth on the assumption that since people are 98.6 degrees, each person warms the earth with their body heat?"
Inserted Rick Lax: "Yes, the people at St. Martins have been great. My editors really helped me keep things tight and cohesive. I think any law student will enjoy the tips, and any lawyer will enjoy reading the book and thinking back on their own hijinx."
Matt Lauer: "So, Doctor, you're saying that the international child pornography rings are covers for the polar bear cult? That they use child porn to lure people into the 'To Catch a Predator' houses, but instead of being arrested, they are polarkilled?"
Inserted Rick Lax: "It's been quite an experience writing this book. I've had to walk a fine line between telling it like it is, and protecting the innocent.... and the not so innocent."
Matt Lauer: "Strange and troubling news indeed Doctor, thank you for alerting us to the impending danger."
Inserted Rick Lax: "Thanks for having me Matt."
CONGRATULATIONS R I C K Y
Submitted by linda (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 16:23.
CONGRATULATIONS R I C K Y
It's now a few minutes
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 17:48.
It's now a few minutes before 1:00 Chicago time...how were the Foie gras medallions and with the mayor?
Sounds delicious and confusing.
Sounds like the Today show's
Submitted by Lawyer Boy (not verified) on Wed, 07/09/2008 - 05:04.
Sounds like the Today show's gotten a whole more controversial...
Lawyer Boy Publicity: A Personal Approach
LAWYER BOY doesn’t come out until Tuesday, but my local Barnes & Noble was selling the book today. They had four copies of the book on the “Hardcover New Releases” table, and one of them was propped up on a bookstand.
I went to that Barnes & Noble to study for the bar exam—22 more days (!)—but ended up spending my time hovering nearby my book, waiting for somebody to pick it up. Trouble was, this bookstore is in Chicago’s business district, and nobody really goes there on weekends.
But FINALLY, some guy carrying two or three other books picked up LAWYER BOY and flipped though it for five whole minutes. He read the jacket description. Read the blurbs. Read a random page. But then he put it back on the bookstand.
“Didn’t make the cut?” I said.
“Excuse me?” he replied.
“You flipped through the book for like five minutes. And it looked like you were into it. You only flipped through that other book you’re holding for like sixty seconds. What the hell?”
“Do we know each other?”
The guy’s name, I learned, was Sam. Sam was in town for a summer clerkship at BigLaw…and I’m pleased to report he ended up buying a copy of Lawyer Boy. And no I don’t feel weird about talking somebody into buying my book; I’m panning to persuade people for a living, after all.
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Hello! I just randomly found
Submitted by Leigh (not verified) on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 18:36.
Hello! I just randomly found your book at Barnes & Noble in Chicago (probably the same one you mentioned) and read the first few pages - it's hilarious! I plan to read the whole thing. Congrats on your book!
Thanks, Counselor Leigh.
Submitted by ricklax on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 19:13.
Thanks, Counselor Leigh. If you do read the whole thing, be sure to let me know what you think.
Congrats on your first sale!
Submitted by Elliott (not verified) on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 23:02.
Congrats on your first sale! Sounds like you REALLY earned it.
Forget studying for the bar, just hang out in book stores all day convincing people to buy Lawyer Boy!
Saw your book at the Barnes
Submitted by Henry (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 14:58.
Saw your book at the Barnes & Noble in the Viagra Triangle in Chicago three days ago. It was definitely the most eye-catching book on the table. If I saw any books with more interesting covers I would have flipped them over and put copies of your book on top of them. That'll show 'em.
I second the idea of studying at B&N locations and taking breaks to sell people your book. You could even offer autographs as part of your sale. Think about it.
Congratulations on your new
Submitted by LawTunes (not verified) on Wed, 07/09/2008 - 03:31.
Congratulations on your new release from all of us at LawTunes! Your book joins our CDs and all the other non-disparaging legal humor efforts out there which, in addition to making people smile, help them to perceive lawyers as less stuffy and more approachable, which means they may be more amenable to calling on us when they truly need our help. Good luck on the bar exam.
Hey Rick Thanks for the
Submitted by Michelle (not verified) on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 12:28.
Hey Rick
Thanks for the book, I am looking forward to reading it. But I am must say ... I thought there might have been an autograph inside. Guess I will have to take my copy, head down south and find a bookstore where you like to study.
BTW, Henry, something tells me Rick might decide to go to B & N locations to talk people into buying the book and then, when that gets tiring, take breaks to study.
I'm Smarter Than a Monkey!
The oracle said that Socrates was the smartest man in Greece because he acknowledged and appreciated his own ignorance. I must be the smartest law school graduate in Chicago because I’m painfully aware of how much I don’t know.
I just took a diagnostic test on the multi-state multiple choice section of the bar exam…and scored a 35%.
Now, the good news is that each question had four options, meaning I did better than a monkey would have done on the exam.
But I’m pretty sure that if you gave the 50-qustion exam to a bunch of monkeys, one of them would have beat 35%. Damn, back in high school, I probably could have told you exactly how many monkeys (who answer exam questions randomly) would need to take a 50-question multiple-choice exam (in which each question has four answer choices) to make it more likely than not that one of them would score at or above the 35% mark.
Tell you what, anybody who can figure out the answer to that question gets a free copy of LAWYER BOY.
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Not enough
Submitted by ryan (not verified) on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 14:46.
Not enough information...although I'm sure if you asked a bunch of monkeys, one of them would answer you correctly
Pretty sure I gave enough
Submitted by ricklax on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 06:22.
Pretty sure I gave enough info...what else do you need?
How smart are the monkeys?
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 17:57.
How smart are the monkeys?
Is it 4 to the 50th power
Submitted by Steve Pirates (not verified) on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 22:09.
Is it 4 to the 50th power monkeys? The problem with monkey analysis is that it's not a complete random number generator. The monkeys might influence one another, after all monkey see, monkey do. Monkeys tend to pick "B" repeatedly because monkeys think that B means banana.
Okay, counselor Pirates, I
Submitted by Rick Lax on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 20:04.
Okay, counselor Pirates, I will hit up my calculator and get back to you. My gut tells me your guess is too high, but we will see...
I bet it's .35*(4^50)
Submitted by Steve Pirates (not verified) on Sat, 06/07/2008 - 04:39.
I bet it's .35*(4^50) monkeys. If you're only trying for 35% accuracy. But, I don't think it's entirely right because monkeys aren't random number generators. They're not dependent variables. If monkey-see monkey-do holds true, then they could very well all hit the same button each time (see supra re bananas)
What's up Ricky. You lawyers
Submitted by Andrew Roskamp (not verified) on Tue, 06/17/2008 - 15:00.
What's up Ricky. You lawyers may be smart - most probably smarter than monkeys even ... but it looks like you need the help of a Financial Engineer with this problem. ;)
You'd need ~13 monkeys taking the test such that there is a greater than 50% chance that at least one of them scores 35% or better.
A single monkey has a score that follows a binomial distribution with 50 trials and a success of each trial of 25% (ie, 50 questions, 4 choices each question). This binomial distribution can be approximated with a normal distribution with mean of [50 * .25] and standard deviation of [sqrt(50 * .25 * .75)]. To get at least 35% correct on the test, the monkey would need at least 17.5 questions correct, which is 1.63 standard deviations from the mean [(17.5 - mean) / std dev]. A z-score of 1.63 or better happens 5.12% of the time [1 - (standard normal cumulative distribution function evaluated at 1.63)] meaning that a single monkey would score 35% or better with probability 5.12%.
Now we want to know how many monkeys it takes to get a 50% probability or better that at least one of them scores at least 35%. With a batch of n monkeys, the probability that NONE of them score 35% or better is [(1 - 5.12%) ^ n]. So, the probably that AT LEAST ONE of them scores 35% or better is [1 - (1 - 5.12%) ^ n]. We want this probability to be greater than or equal to 50%, so simply set this equation equal to 50%, and solve for n (consolidate terms, take log of both sides, and divide). Viola - 13.179 monkeys!
It's up to you to determine whether 13 monkeys is a comforting number or not. At any rate, I would guess there are many fewer videos of monkeys doing card tricks on YouTube. =)
Book Review Critics
(Critics from the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books fight over a copy of Lawyer Boy)
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Publishers Weekly Review
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)
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I found the next one: "Solid
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 21:52.
I found the next one:
"Solid and funk-free, Lawyerbow lovingly tosses American ego about like a cat with string, mixing things up just enough to remind us that, when we get down to what's really important, there isn't that much separating traditional red state muscle from blue state radicalism (among other factors, least of which are the deceivers and thieves among us). All within the space of a traditional nuts-and-bolts studio summer picture, that is - the area in which Rick Lax's very-capable adaptation succeeds most broadly, its barely-hidden subtext deliberately de-politicized in favor of more a more universally guided moral compass."
You can read the full review at http://projectionbooth.blogspot.com/2008/05/iron-man-2008-b.html
Good work buddy!
Yeah, this reviewer totally
Submitted by Rick Lax on Thu, 05/15/2008 - 00:17.
Yeah, this reviewer totally 'got' it.
Lawyer Boy graduates
Submitted by Elliott (not verified) on Sat, 05/17/2008 - 20:28.
Lawyer Boy graduates tomorrow. Will that make him a Lawyer Man, or does that not happen until he has practiced law for 13 years?
So this is the first time
So this is the first time I've posted on your blog.I should have done it sooner, you know, to congratulate you on graduating law school, to congratulate you on your book, etc etc. Instead you get this.....you get locked out of your apartment more than anyone I know! Perhaps you should look for an apartment with a door that doesn't involve keys. Or never leave your apartment. Or at least make a point to wear pants when you do, becasuse you know what's gonna happen.
WHY does situation you got
WHY does situation you got into not surprise me? I don't think it surprises Karen K at all either. By the way - HI Karen! Congrats on YOUR book too!
You should buy one of those
You should buy one of those fake rocks to hide your spare key. Just keep it right outside your door. It'll look natural.
Counselor Linda, I don't
Counselor Linda,
I don't think Counselor "Karen K." is the "Karen K" you think she is.
Beat of luck on the Bar
Beat of luck on the Bar Exam, Rick!
And don't worry, I know you will do great. Assuming you don't get locked out of the exam without any pants on, of course!