A Toast to the Anonymous Lawyer
July 21st, 2006
Early Thursday morning, I found myself wedged in a middle seat of a 5 hour long flight and unable to sleep. I mention the context only because it takes such an extreme situation for me to read USA Today. I had hung onto it that morning because I knew my laptop battery could only hold on for so long and I wasn’t sure I wanted to invest 90 minutes in the Antonio Banderas dance movie.
As I was scanning the purple pages of McPaper, I came across this article about a satirical law firm website and the six-figure book extension of it that goes on sale Tuesday. What stopped me in my tracks was the photo of the author. It appears that Anonymous Law Firm, its blog and the new book are the creations of Jeremy Blachman. Jeremy was 2 years my junior at our alma mater and I was part of the hiring team that brought him to Texas to work in enterprise software. We weren’t sure what he would do at Trilogy, but knew he was smarter than we were, that he was wildly creative and that its good to have those types of folks around. He ended up leaving for Harvard Law, but his only actual experience working in a law firm has been (or most likely will ever be) summer internships. The incredible detail of Anonymous Lawyer and Law Firm are come straight from his imagination.
To give you a taste of the style, here is the July 12 news update on Anonymous Law Firm’s site:
Paralegal dies in some sort of accident
The Firm mourns the loss of a paralegal, who apparently died last month from some illness or in an accident. He/she was a valuable and loved employee, whose dedication was noticed by all. He/she will be missed. On a brighter note, new paper clips arrived today, and everyone is very excited. The Firm’s recent paper clip shortage has impacted everyone’s life here, from the partners who use the paper clips to the associates who get the paper clips thrown at them. A party was held to celebrate the new paper clips in conference room 24B. Cake was served. Also, we mourned the loss of our paralegal, who we miss deeply, and wish he or she was still here with us. A fund has been established in his/her name, as soon as we remember it.
So, if you can spare a few moments this Friday, treat yourself to a turn through this site. It will make you both laugh out loud and think twice about your own company’s business writing.
Update: Jeremy is also blogging as himself on Amazon and here.
Other posts by Virginia.
Andy Woolard says:
Great point on the amusing tone of biz writing, it’s good to turn the lense every once in a while…but I got a louder laugh out of the first two lines of your post.
July 21st, 2006 at 10:31 amJeremy says:
Virginia asked me to add a comment about the kinds of marketing I’ve been doing for the book — and obviously after a post as humbling and kind as this, I’m more than happy to share.
Besides blogging in character, and creating the parody law firm site, I’ve been playing around with some word of mouth marketing of my own — just trying to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. I set up pages on MySpace and Friendster and Facebook. I’ve been blogging on Amazon about the book. My publisher made anonymous lawyer pencils they’re going to give out to students tomorrow morning taking the bar exam. And I’ve sent about 300 advance copies of the book to bloggers across the blogosphere, hoping they’ll read and post about the book — there’s been about 30 reviews so far.
I know there are other authors sending books to bloggers, but I also let some blogs give away an extra copy of the book to their readers, mailed straight from my publisher, just as an incentive for them to have to blog about it and spread the word. I’m not sure that’s been done before.
Also to get readers involved with something interactive, I created a fake job application on the firm site, an e-card for bar exam takers, and an opportunity for readers to e-mail me their headshots and get listed on the site.
Finally, I went to a recording studio to do 6 short podcasts that are up on the site and also on iTunes, Podcast Alley and a whole bunch of other places.
I think that’s it. I’d love to hear any more ideas from the readers here, if anyone has any thoughts. I think it’s amazing, in a lot of cases, how little a lot of publishers are using the Internet to market books and get people talking — especially since the power of the technology to reach people and spread ideas via word of mouth is so enormous.
July 24th, 2006 at 9:05 pm