Explaining the Inexplicable: The Rodent's Guide to Lawyers

``The Firm is a hotbed of overcharged clients, overpaid lawyers and oversized egos,'' declares the pseudonymous author, who regularly satirizes the weird world of corporate law in a newsletter and a column syndicated in legal newspapers. This handbook from the underside is amusing but thin--some of the best material is not the Rodent's own but public domain anecdotes like the tale of the firm that added a 40% surcharge when it billed a client for a lawyer's pastries. Sometimes the author strains for laughs: a sample law school application offers Salman Rushdie and Roman Polanski as personal references. Other efforts have the edge of authenticity: a faux memo regarding the treatment of summer associates proposes the mantra: ``The Firm isn't a sweatshop''; wearing the same clothes to the office for two days running, the author observes, is a sign not of amatory success but of pulling an all-nighter. A broadside warning for starry-eyed students and others lost in law. (Aug.)