What I’d Read
A reader emailed me after my last post and asked if I have any reading recommendations for some other newsletters a lawyer might enjoy. Obviously the first thing I did was figure out where this person worked, email their boss, and let them know that they have an underling with free time, and maybe they want to manage their employees a little better. If I had an associate who asked me for reading recommendations, gosh, I think that whatever book I’d throw at them would definitely leave a mark.
In any case… I don’t have any actual reading recommendations, at least not in this post (maybe one day, if anyone else is actually curious), but I do have a short list of things I would definitely read if they existed:
WORST TYPOS: a newsletter of horrible mistakes, preferably in high-stakes contexts, and even better if there were serious consequences. Is there anything better than deriving entertainment from other people’s consequential mistakes? I don’t think so.
WHAT I EXPENSED: things people charged to their employers that maybe they shouldn’t have. Along the same lines, I’d totally read endlessly about the online grocery orders of people with more money than they know what to do with, or about really fancy office supplies that I’m never going to actually buy.
DOWNWARD MOBILITY: where do the associates who leave big firms actually end up, and are they happier? Like, genuinely happier, or just lying to themselves while they run around the Amazon factory packing those fancy office supplies in boxes and shipping them to their former colleagues?
INTERNET SEARCH LOGS FROM MY COLLEAGUES. Oh, wait! I do read those! And they’re amazing.*
REJECTED APPLICATIONS. For anything, from anywhere. I guess I just long for more exposure to people’s pain. Perhaps that is why I went to law school in the first place!
So there is my reading wishlist.
*I imagine they might look kind of like this:
“How do I make it seem like I am still in a Zoom after I have left?” “How can I make my virtual background a video of me nodding and smiling?” “How can I set an auto-reply to Zoom chats?” “How can I pretend my Internet connection is unstable?” “How can I delete my search history?”