Five stars

What’s better than a biting satire about a corrupt for-profit law school aimed at catering to those students who never had a chance (or the genetics, or the connections, or the silver spoon) of getting into Harvard Law? A book about this very subject written by two Harvard Law graduates.

Set in the fictitious Manhattan Law School–which sounds like it could be a serious institution of higher learning, doesn’t it?–the sad reality of the school mirrors its location along the banks of a polluted body of water adjacent to Brooklyn. Adam Wright, a one-time eternal optimist who leaves behind the pressures of a law firm  in order to give a professorship a try, quickly finds there’s nothing Ivy League-ish about his new position. From zombie-students who are just there taking up space to the understanding that sleeping with the students in exchange for a better grade is unacceptable unless the student is a third-year, everything that’s wrong with the legal profession is compressed into one sad law school.

So then, why is the book so darn funny? The authors have done a masterful job of creating a completely surreal environment that quickly draws you in and makes the bizarre seem acceptable. The writing is stellar, of course, but not just good, it’s masterful.

The real horror of the book? Well, let’s just hope works like this one remain firmly entrenched in satire, and don’t ever, ever cross over into plausible reality.