LAWYERLAND
Lawrence Joseph
PRAISE FOR LAWYERLAND
"Gripping ... charged, often hilarious, always dramatic ... part
anthropological, part performance piece. Joseph's lawyers ...
come alive on the page with a furious vitality ... second cousins
to David Memet's or Eric Bogosian's ranters." --Philip
Lopate, Esquire
"Joseph, who is a poet with three books of verse to his credit
and also a law professor at St. John's University, as constructed a
cunning virtual intersection out of his different interests.
Lawyerland has the texture of a documentary ... but each vignette
is so artfully composed, and the testimony being elicited has so
much verbal drama, that it isn't long before we begin to wonder
whether we're in the hands of a writer driven by the occult agendas
of fiction rather than the more straightforward ones of
journalism." --Vijay Seshadri, The New Yorker
Joseph is good at catching the way people talk and the details
of their mannerisms ... His lively characters fairly jump off the
page." --Christopher Lehman-Haupt, The New York
Times
"Cover[s] everything ... about late-century America ... its
justice system, its culture, its racism, its prurience --
everything. Joseph captures the exact fit between legal
language and the unsettled life of contemporary America."
--Richard Weisberg, New York Daily News
"An amazing 'Notes from the Underground' of New York-based
American law ... Rapid-fire dialogue ... startling and original and
irresistably readable." --Joyce Carol Oates
"Brilliant, insightful, torrentially energetic ... genuinely
original." --Colin Harrison
"High speed, high energy, perfectly pitched, provocative
as hell -- a masterpiece." --Thom Jones
"The dialogue hums with intuitive truths ... The result: a
singular insight into what makes these complex characters
tick. It's no wonder the book is creating a buzz."
--Robert Kurson, Chicago Sun Times
"So amusing, so full of ideas, and just enough like smart,
engaging people shooting the breeze, that I'm glad so many accepted
Joseph's invitation and gave him an excuse to spin his tales, truth
or factual." --Jill Laurie Goodman, The Philadelphia
Inquirer
"With an ear for dialogue that is quick and riveting ... Joseph
disrobes the world of Manhattan lawyering in a work that fits no
genre -- it's part social commentary and part documentary, with a
dash of wit and irony." --Jeffrey Ghannam, Detroit Free
Press
"Marvelously voyeuristic, frank, fiendish, and delightful ...
insightful and well-crafted .. top-notch ... should jump to the
head of any lawyer's -- and law student's -- 'must read'
list." --Elaine R. Friedman, New York Law
Journal
"Defies simple classification, but is, above all, a great
eavesdropping session on everyone from a federal judge who revels
in watching an attorney pick up a woman on the subway to a labor
lawyer who spits venom at her corporate counterpart." --Susan
Orenstein, New York Observer
"Revelatory, intriguing, provocative." --Ruth Coughlin,
Hour Detroit
"Snappy ... his sense of pace is terrific." --Rob Long,
The Weekly Standard
"An intriguing and insightful series of real life vignettes ...
voices worth hearing, for what they can say has revelance beyond
the courtroom." --Steven Richman, The Trenton Sunday
Times
"Eight chapters of pungent, imagined conversations among
Manhattan lawyers revealing a world others rarely see. The
talk is by turns funny, sad, touching, discouraging ... the whole
range of the human condition." --Jim Dulzo, Metro
Times