Heaven help us if this actually becomes a TV show.

I'm going to be releasing a novel and a television series loosely based on my summer work experience. It's going to be a profile of the incorrigible janitor that supervised my toilet-scrubbing duties.

I'm calling it "Chamber Pot."

9:11

Looks like Loyola2L forgot to sign his post.

Um, is it normal for a law firm like Cleary to create positions especially for an associate to write a book and not to bill? Something sounds fishy...

"She mentioned that the firm was actually accommodating to her needs as a writer and essentially created a new position for her so that she could concentrate more on the book. She also said she received two months off to allow her to finish up some edits on the book as well. She actually said she loved the firm and had a wonderful experience...."

Sounds like Cleary found a really smooth way to fire her.

1. Get her away from clients and billing hours.

2. Make up a new temporary position for her instead of turning oer out on the street.

3. Make sure she leaves feeling like she had a "wonderful experience."

If the firm was "actually accommodating to her needs as a writer," they might have done something to address her lack of talent and imagination.

I can't wait! It'll answer the age old question -- what happens when you take CBS's short lived Supreme Court skein "First Monday" -- and add stare decisis and a laugh track!

I worked at Cleary with Saira and can corroborate that the basics of what she said at the South Asian Bar Association are true. Saira was fairly open at Cleary about her writing interests, and, without going into too many specifics, the firm agreed to move her to a special position with more regular hours that didn't involve working on actual cases/deals. The position wasn't "created" for her per se; it already existed and attorneys looking for a change of pace would rotate through. Cleary has always been very accomodating of associates who want to carve out time for other things, and while it might disqualify you from partner track, they have no problem keeping you on payroll, giving you whatever work you can handle, and keeping their associate retention numbers up. I was surprised when I read the line in the Inquirer article about her being made to feel unwelcome there and think she must have been misquoted.

Are you deleting "first" posts now Lat? That takes away some of the fun......

9:43 -- I totally agree - this place has gotten really uptight and booorrinng... So much for the middle school humor which added a needed touch of whimsy to my life.

Anders motions and 2255 petitions = comedy gold!

Who cares? We want to hear more about the 1000 pound judge.

So, she got special treatment at Cleary?

Me: "Umm...so hey there Senior Partner. I was wondering if I could ummm..work on a writing project? Also, I don't want to bill anymore and...um...could you please make my hours 9-5? Also, I'm going to quit as soon as my book is done. Is that cool with you?"

Senior Partner: "You're fired. Get out. Oh, make sure you finish the motion you're working on. And, you're fired. Did I say that already? Can't remember. Get out."

I love this chick! First, a BIGLAW firm creates a special position for her ("Senior Slacker Counsel"?). Then, she writes a book talking smack about a judge who's husband died. Then, she gets to turn her book into a TV series!

9:37 writes: "the firm agreed to move her to a special position with more regular hours that didn't involve working on actual cases/deals"

see 9:23(1)

10:34,

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uDuDEvCIhDY

Thousands of shows are being optioned in LA at any moment.

I also doubt the premise of this entry. No client would want a backstabber as a lawyer. I would freak out of I learned my attorney wrote some tell-all book. For this reason, there is no chance in hell her firm wanted her to stay.

26 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT!, June 22, 2007
By RStar (New York) - See all my reviews

I clerked on the federal court of appeals. I'm also an Indian woman. So I was very excited about reading this book. What a letdown! This book is awful. Aside from the horrendous writing style ("novel" is a generous description, this is more like someone's blog rantings), the biggest problem with it is that you end up feeling little to no sympathy for the narrator. She is whiny and narcissistic, with a HUGE sense of entitlement. She treats everyone around her with condescension and disdain, and then wonders why people aren't nice to her. She doesn't seem to have a grasp of basic legal principles, and then is outraged that her judge expects her law clerks to know these things (to use a minor example since it won't give anything away, she is utterly confused by the term "en banc," which would be fine unless you supposedly just graduated from Columbia Law School and got a clerkship on the 3rd Circuit). She seems to be out the door at 5pm every day and never works in the evenings or on weekends (most law clerks out there will understand what an amazing and unbelieavable schedule this is), and then can't understand why her judge expects her to finish her work more quickly since she has been working "so hard." Basically, in the end you are left with the feeling that maybe "Sheila Raj" just wasn't cut out for the rigors of her job and so she has to find a way to attribute that failure to someone else. "Judge Friedman" is the perfect target, but the more Raj tries to convince us what a monster Friedman is (and she is a monster at times, although really only to Raj's co-clerks rather than Raj herself), the harder it becomes to believe because by that time you have realized Raj need only look in the mirror to find the real cause of her apparent misery (it's also hard to understand why Raj is SO unhappy -- she has a prestigious clerkship that she is leveraging to land her dream job, great hours, interesting work, and supportive friends and family -- basically she keeps getting everything she wants and is still complaining). Anyway, if I could give this less than 1 star I would. Don't waste your money on this. If you are a law student who is thinking about clerking, keep in mind there is a reason this book is in the fiction section.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Very disapponting - save your money, July 8, 2007
By SW (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This was a dreadful book. The writing is mediocre, the "humor" is forced, and the gratuitous swipes at nearly everyone in the book is tiresome and juvenile. There is nothing clever or thoughtful or particularly insightful here. It's just mean and trite.

Don't spend money on this. ot at least wait for those who did to unload their used copies.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Awful, just awful, July 23, 2007
By Jane Bond "DC reader" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This book was just awful. I too, clerked for a judge on the Third Circuit, and was familiar with the rumors about Judge "Helga Friedman," and was looking forward to an interesting and insightful read. Boy, was I disappointed! This book is bad on every level. The protagonist is whiny, self-centered, and obnoxious. If "Sheila Raj" had stuck to complaining about a tyrant of a judge, I might have felt some sympathy, but she HATED everyone with whom she worked and it is hard to feel sympathy for anyone who ridicules every single person discussed in the book -- from the Judge to the secretaries to other law clerks to court room staff. The main message of the protagonist seemed to be: "I'm cooler than everyone around me; how did I get stuck here?" We all clerked with idiots who were way too obsesse with where they went to school and how well they did there, but there were plenty of wonderful people as well. There were some funny moments, such as the extent to which Friedman excused her bad behavior by asserting "I am a federal judge," however, these moments were overshadowed by the shallow messages and bland prose. My impression of this book is that Raj/Rao picked the wrong field and blamed everybody else for the fact that (1) she did not care about the law; and (2) had no confidence in her analytical abilities. The only insight I gained was an explanation of the scowl on Rao's face on the book jacket. Truly, not worth the money or the time it took to read.

9:37 = Saira

Very weird posting of the bad Amazon reviews but not the good ones. Or the Inquirer's book critic giving it a good review in his article. Or things like this:

http://philafoodie.blogspot.com/2007/07/chambermaid.html

What's very weird is the aggressive trolling for Saira, which could only come from one source.

Disclaimer: I know and like Saira.

Disclaimer #2: I worked at Cleary (I left because I moved to a city where Cleary doesn't have an office).

It is totally believable that Cleary would accomodate Saira in the manner she states. It is an unusual law firm in that way. Cleary has a very small partnership with lockstep compensation. They therefore have developed a business model that not only anticipates, but is predicated on folks leaving to go do other things. And they encourage them to go do interesting things, and have invested a lot of time and money into maintaining an alumni network. I still get invited to all the holiday parties.

I think that they figure that if someone is going to leave, or even switch to another field entirely, they might as well do what they can to make the departure on good terms that could benefit Cleary down the road. Smart.

"a special position with more regular hours that didn't involve working on actual cases/deals."

Janitor? Receptionist? How can you be a lawyer and not work on actual cases or deals? Oh, I get it, she worked on theoretical cases and deals, for virtual clients, who paid virtual money. And then, I'm sure, Cleary didn't "actually" show her the door.

The bad reviews vastly outnumber the good reviews.

Same with the blog comments.

I suspect the good:bad ratio roughly correlates with the ratio of (Saira's friends):(people who have read the book).

She was a regular associate, took a leave of absence and then came back as a "knowledge management" attorney, in which capacity she would scold people for under-utilizing the firm's knowledge management resources, such as they are. Then she left. I heard a rumor that while a knowledge management attorney she was paid at or just below the regular associate pay scale, which would've been quite a coup for her since the job seemed like a cakewalk. I have no idea whether the firm was supportive of her outside endeavors or not, although I think she was fairly well liked and I have no reason to think the firm wasn't supportive (particularly given the firm's thinly veiled desire to cultivate the vault guide's "quirky cleary" reputation). As I'm sure is the case at any firm, you can benefit if the right senior people like you. Similarly, you can get ground into oblivion if no one cares about you. I think she was lucky enough to be in the former camp.

disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, never went to law school.

I wonder if the reason there are so many negative comments is because so many lawyers are posting. The way in which people work to discredit Saira Rao I wonder if they work wih Scientology.

I loved the book. I found it witty and insightful.

2:40 - so the bad reviews come from unbiased people who have actually read the book, and the good reviews are from Rao's friends who haven't read the book??? It appears that many of the negative posts are from people who have not read the book and have some sort of personal bias against Rao, hence the personal attacks on her rather than constructive critique of the book...Sloviter groupies or former colleagues perhaps? You are way overthinking/overstating your bias, presumably in pursuit of your own self-serving mission....this book is a funny story of a smart young woman trying to make her way in a scary world that she has been groomed for and aspired to for much of her life. That the writer would apply context from her personal experiences should not be surprising. Isn’t that what writers do? Most people have experienced similar challenges and anxiety at the outset of their careers. Why should talking about this be taboo for any profession? The lawyers acting so humorlessly incensed by Chambermaid are reinforcing one of the underlying themes of the book….that many lawyers/clerks are arrogant self-important duds that take themselves WAY too seriously.

BOOK REVIEW
'Chambermaid' by Saira Rao
Chick lit meets legal thriller
By Jonathan Shapiro
Special to The Times

July 28, 2007

What do you get when you cross a brain-dead rip-off of a John Grisham novel with a bad imitation of "Bridget Jones's Diary"?

The answer is "Chambermaid," Saira Rao's debut novel about a naive law school graduate who clerks for a demented federal judge.

The book's narrator, law clerk Sheila Raj, isn't some brainiac. She's just a regular New York girl with "a killer wardrobe, a darling (rent-stabilized) apartment in the West Village, and a fabulous group of friends." She likes boys and having fun, though she's a little insecure and sometimes wets her pants (literally) when people around her yell.

A budding Sandra Day O'Connor she isn't.

Sheila feels happy when she lands a clerkship with Judge Helga Friedman, a "President Gerald Ford appointee, first woman ever to sit on a federal court of appeals, and former Penn Law Professor. In sum, a legal Goddess."

But Sheila soon feels sad (or "barfy," as she puts it elsewhere in the book). The job "sucks" (another of the author's word choices). The other clerks are nerds who break "off into little cliques. Why had nobody invited me? I was wearing a cute outfit and had great hair."

Even worse, Friedman turns out to be meaner than the boss in "The Devil Wears Prada," who at least wore cool outfits. Friedman just wears a black robe.

Get it?

So does the marketing division of Grove Press, which must've thought it had a live one here. Chick lit sells, and people love legal thrillers. Why not combine them into one salable book?

There is always something appealing about the story of a young person's first tentative steps in a chosen profession. The clash of romantic ideals with the reality of work, the hard-won competence and eventual compromises that constitute a career is a universal journey. Although the dynamic between an older female boss and her young assistant has been worked to death in books about the fashion and entertainment industries, Rao's notion of placing the relationship in the serious-minded world of a federal judge's chambers feels fresh and rife with possibility.

The problem is one of execution. Rao identifies great material but fails to build it into anything satisfying.

As a legal thriller, the book is a nonstarter. By uncovering a dark conspiracy involving a death penalty case, an ambitious politician and appellate court intrigue, Sheila threatens to block the appointment of a Supreme Court nominee. This loopy conceit fails to give the book -- which is lazily constructed and filled with gaping logical and legal holes -- any shape or narrative drive.

And although Rao has identified great comic potential in Sheila and the judge, her disdain for both characters is off-putting. Sheila is a study in shallowness. Without irony or self-awareness, she obsesses over landing a "prestigious gig" while criticizing fellow clerks as "patronizing pedigree whores." She thrills at the chance of having "a real-life lesbian" as a fellow clerk but ultimately decides to stick with gay men friends instead: "What kind of self-respecting woman could live in the gayborhood without a gay sidekick?" She enjoys making fun of the accent of the Laotian boy who serves her coffee but spouts nonsense herself: "[C]ountless innocent people have been executed over the past decade." (Really? Where?)

Nothing illustrates Sheila's shallowness more than her hatred of Friedman. Though Friedman is acknowledged to be a champion of civil liberties and a gender trailblazer, Sheila detests her as a "toxic bitch" who hates babies, vacations and quality hair care. Friedman's gravest sins are being old and ugly.

"Judge Friedman was a lot of things -- evil and gross come to mind," Sheila says, describing the judge as: "About four feet ten inches tall, with orthotics on her crooked feet, polyester pantsuit, sunglasses the size of Fat Albert's behind, and a massive bun atop her tiny head." Sheila smirks that Friedman has to drag her leg because "her right one was markedly longer than the left." When Friedman attempts to engage her in conversation, Sheila wonders if Friedman "knew that two long, slightly curly hairs were coming out of her right nostril." When Friedman's husband dies, Sheila complains about having to attend "the biggest three-ring circus of all: SHIVAH." There she is nauseated by the food and behavior of mourners such as "Esther, who was licking pickled herring from her bony fingers

[T]he way everyone was eating, you'd have thought these people had just been bused in from a refugee camp." At least Rao had the good taste not to say concentration camp.

Elsewhere in the book, Sheila's hatred for Friedman descends into a kind of hysteria: "The puffiness left her eyes, leaving them shriveled jelly beans. I wished Ronald Reagan were there to eat them." Huh? Later, Raj writes, "Before our very eyes, [Friedman] appeared to turn green, as a tail crept from under her desk."

Reviewing a book, like judging a case, is not wholly a subjective affair. Some objective standards exist, and a few truths are self-evident. One truth is that an author attempting to write a funny book needs to have a sense of humor. If Rao has one, she has hidden it under a mean-spirited barrage of stereotypes. I don't mind that her portrayal of Friedman as a loud, pushy, obnoxious, cheap, misshapen devil and manipulator of American institutions seems offensive. What I object to is that it isn't funny.

And so, the great chick-lit/legal drama remains unwritten. Despite her ambitions, all Rao proves in "Chambermaid" is that she is untalented in two genres.

Jonathan Shapiro, a former federal prosecutor and adjunct law professor, writes and produces television shows, including, most recently, the upcoming NBC police procedural "Life."

FICTION: A legal satire in broad strokes


By DOUG CHILDERS
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Thinking about spending a year clerking for a federal judge? My advice: read Saira Rao's debut novel, "Chambermaid," before you sign anything. The courts aren't necessarily as staid and normal as those dark robes suggest.

Sure, it's just a novel. But Rao knows the territory. Like Sheila Raj, the protagonist and narrator of "Chambermaid," she clerked for a female federal appeals court judge in Philadelphia. We can only hope Rao exaggerated her experiences for comic effect.

Raj is one of those comically narcissistic characters for whom everything proves disappointing. The Laotian kid working the counter at Dunkin' Donuts never remembers her order, although it never varies. A woman walking her dog does nothing to stop her pet -- a poodle, no less -- from licking Raj's leg on the street. "It was ninety-five degrees outside," Rao writes. "Hot, sweaty, sad, dog saliva drenching hairy leg."

Not surprisingly, Raj initially finds herself without office allies. One of her office mates fills his spare time impersonating a medieval bard named Felemid McDowell; another lives with her brother and two cats and delights in spurning offers of friendship and basic human decency.

They're warm and fuzzy compared to the judge for whom Raj clerks, though. Equipped with a spear and a Viking helmet, Judge Helga Friedman would fit right in as the villain in a corpse-strewn opera. Even her hair is unnerving.

"It appeared that her bouffant twitched when angry," Rao writes. "Left, right, left, right. A true marvel."

Among the few characters who don't offend Raj is a fellow clerk named Matthew. What's special about him? As Raj observes when they meet, he has perfectly sized teeth. "My mother had always warned me against men with small teeth ('not to be trusted, those men')," Raj tells us. "As for big teeth, they were unsavory for obvious aesthetic reasons."

Admit it: you just secretly checked the size of your own teeth, right?

Rao layers the satire on with an exceptionally broad brush, but the surface similarities between Rao and Raj's clerking experience may give readers pause.

More than once, you may find yourself asking, do judges really throw objects at their clerks and insult their ethnicity or sexual orientations? Can a person drive into a blocked-off work zone, plummet into a giant hole in the road and get away with it by screaming "I AM A FEDERAL JUDGE!"?

Law clerks of the future, you have been warned.

The devil may wear Prada, but in Saira Rao’s comedic debut novel, she also wields a gavel. Narrated by a recent Columbia Law graduate who spends a hellish year working for a federal judge, Chambermaid aims to provide a behind-the-scenes look at the judicial system and “how great lawyers and great judges are made.” When protagonist Sheila Raj lands a coveted clerkship at a court of appeals in Philadelphia, she is thrilled to be one step closer to her dream job as a lawyer for the ACLU. But she is soon shocked to discover that her new boss, Helga Friedman, is more sadistic than honorable. The judge delights in humiliating her staff; before long, she even outlaws lunch breaks.

While Rao’s novel features some truly funny moments, the plot twists often feel forced and predictable. Even worse, the characters are too exaggerated to elicit any sympathy. Sheila’s ludicrous office-mates include a medievalist male secretary with a mullet and a snotty Harvard alum with a crystal-meth addiction. Too much ink is spent developing the interpersonal relationships among the clerks, resulting in the loss of potentially interesting legal insight. Had Rao kept the focus on the high-profile death-penalty case that Sheila is assigned to work on as opposed to the plodding romantic story line, Chambermaid might have amounted to more than jurisprudential chick lit. Given the number of law-school-rank and bar-exam jokes, the book will undoubtedly appeal to legal drones, but for most, it’s unlikely to stand out from other fluffy summer fare.

— Katherine Vagnino