He's a hiring partner at one of the world's largest law firms. Brilliant yet ruthless, he has little patience for associates who leave the office before midnight or steal candy from the bowl on his secretary's desk. He hates holidays and paralegals. And he's just started a weblog to tell the world about what life is really like at the top of his profession. Meet Anonymous Lawyer. The summer's about to start, and he's got a new crop of interns. But he's also got a few things bothering him: The Jerk, his bitter rival, is determined to beat him out for the chairman's job. And Anonymous Wife is spending his money as fast as he can make it. And there's that secret blog he's writing, which is just a perverse bit of fun until he gets an e-mail from someone inside the firm who knows he's its author. “Stocked with up-to-the-minute references, and exposing, as it does, our culture's mania to win at all costs, Anonymous Lawyer has pierced the heart of a moment in our social history.” ― New York Post (four stars) “A fast, furious, and funny read.” ― Tampa Tribune “Blachman skewers his profession with slash-and-burn ferocity. . . . Laugh 'til it hurts.” ― Rocky Mountain News “Jeremy Blachman is a very funny writer.” ― The Wall Street Journal “A fast and funny read about life in a human shark tank . . . It takes skill to weave plot and character into a breezy and blog-like style, and Jeremy Blachman pulls it off.” ― The Charlotte Observer Jeremy Blachman is not a hiring partner at a major law firm, but he is the author of a popular blog called Anonymous Lawyer. He is a recent graduate of Harvard Law School and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Anonymous Lawyer By Jeremy Blachman Picador USA Copyright © 2007 Jeremy Blachman All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312425555 WEEK ONE Monday, May 8   I see you. I see you walking by my office, trying to look like you have a reason to be there. But you don’t. I see the guilty look on your face. You try not to make eye contact. You try to rush past me as if you’re going to the bathroom. But the bathroom is at the other end of the hall. You think I’m naïve, but I know what you’re doing. Everyone knows. But she’s my secretary, not yours, and her candy belongs to me, not you. And if I have a say in whether or not you ever become a partner at this firm—and trust me, I do—I’m not going to forget this. My secretary. My candy. Go back to your office and finish reading the addendum to the lease agreement. I don’t want to see you in the hall for at least another sixteen hours. AND STOP STEALING MY CANDY.   And stop stealing my stapler, too. I shouldn’t have to go wandering the halls looking for a stapler. I’m a partner at a half-billion-dollar law firm. Staplers should be lining up at my desk, begging for me to use them. So should the young lawyers who think I know their names. The Short One, The Dumb One, The One With The Limp, The One Who’s Never Getting Married, The One Who Missed Her Kid’s Funeral—I don’t know who these people really are. You in the blue shirt—no, the other blue shirt—I need you to count the number of commas in this three-foot-tall stack of paper. Pronto. The case is going to trial seven years from now, so I’ll need this done by the time I leave the office today. Remember: I can make or break you. I hold your future in my hands. I decide whether you get a view of the ocean or a view of the dumpster. This isn’t a game. Get back to work. My secretary. My stapler. MY CANDY.   #Posted by Anonymous at 1:14 pm   Tuesday, May 9   I can barely do anything this morning knowing there’s a living creature in the office next to mine. Usually it’s just the corporate securities partner, and he hasn’t moved a muscle since the Carter administration. But today he brought his dog into the office. Ridiculous. As if there aren’t enough animals here already. We had fish once. Piranhas. We overfed them. We threw The Fat Guy’s lunch in the tank one day because he showed up to a meeting fifteen minutes late. The fish devoured it—turkey sandwich, brownie, forty-eight-ounce Coke—and then exploded. It made the point. No one shows up late to my meetings anymore.   But the dog arrived this morning and immediately everyone was in the hallway instead of where they belong, staring into their computer screens. Associates were getting up, out of their chairs, to go chase the dog, pet the dog, talk to the dog. Someone gave the dog a piece of his muffin from the attorney lounge. The muffins aren’t for dogs. We don’t even let the paralegals have the muffins. The muffins are for client-billing attorneys. They’re purely sustenance to keep the lawyers from having to leave the office for breakfast. They’re not for visitors. I made a note of the incident and I’ll have a dollar-fifty taken off the guy’s next paycheck.   The dog barked once. I told his owner to keep the dog quiet or I’d lock him in the document room with the junior associates who’ve been in there for six weeks, searching