"[I]f you want to become a real lawyer (or mentor a young'un to become one), and you really don't know how, then this is really the book for you. . . . Really!" - The Honorable Richard G. Kopf, Senior United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska, at Hercules and the Umpire "[A]absolutely addictive, unputdown-able. . . . Curmudgeon's Guide pulls off - with great elan - a technique that many writers attempt, only to crash and burn in the face of its extraordinary degree of difficulty. That technique is to deliver deadly accurate truths veiled in laugh-out-loud humor." - Bruce MacEwen, Law Firm Consultant, at Adam Smith, Esq. MARK HERRMANN has done some things. He went to school--Princeton University and The University of Michigan Law School (Michigan Law Review, Order of the Coif). He clerked for a federal judge--The Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He worked as an associate at a small law firm--Steinhart & Falconer in San Francisco. He worked for two years as an associate, and eighteen years as a partner, at a large law firm--Jones Day, in Cleveland and Chicago. Mark is currently the Vice President and Chief Counsel--Litigation at Aon, the world's leading provider of risk management solutions and human resources consulting. Along the way, Mark found time to teach "complex litigation" for nearly a decade on the adjunct faculty of Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He also managed to write a book that was fun and highly acclaimed, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law (ABA 2006), which was a finalist for a Benjamin Franklin Award in 2007. He co-authored two other books, but they were neither fun nor highly acclaimed, Statewide Coordinated Proceedings: State Court Analogues to the Federal MDL Process (Thomson West 2d rev. ed. 2004) and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (Oxford 2012). His articles have appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune to the Tulane Law Review and University of Pennsylvania Law Review PENNumbra . Mark's adult children, Jessica and Jeremy, are great, and his wife, Brenda Gordon, provides the inspiration (or at least the motivation).