If you want to read about spectacular collapses you could do much
better than this book.
Unless you really have a hate on for lawyers, I can't see this book
being very captivating to the average reader. It's very formulaic,
which would be fine if it was filled with great substance, but
that's just not the case. Every chapter is simply another short,
anti-climactic tale of one lawyer's fall from grace. The annoying,
eventually tedious, part is the individual stories are so short
that the introductory paragraph, which summarizes the tale, spoils
any mystery. There's no time to get swept away in what's going on
before you're brought to an abrupt end. Not to mention, you can
tell this was written by a lawyer, there's no build up, just a
plain emotionless statement of the facts. It reads flat, just like
a legal briefing.
Another major problem I have with this is that a number of the
stories end on the note that "at the time of this writing Mr/Mrs
____ were awaiting the outcome of their trial. At best, you're left
with no sense of finality, at worst you start to wonder if this is
just some guy's vendetta against those in the profession he didn't
care for. This happens in at least 3 or 4 times out of the 15
different stories contained in the book and worst of all they all
seem to be clustered at the beginning. I was left somewhat jaded
early into the book (I am a guilty until proven innocent type) and
while I did finish it, towards the end it got so repetitive and
formulaic that I was mostly skimming the pages.
Finally, if we're comparing spectacular downfalls to spectacular
downfalls, this book pales in comparison to anything ever witted on
financiers. The worst lawyer in this book is found guilty of
something like $40-$50 million worth of fraudulent transactions.
Yawn. Compare that to a book like Den of Thieves chronicling the
rise and fall of Drexel Lambert - these guys were ripping people
off in the multimillions EVERY TRANSACTION. They were slapped with
a HALF-BILLION DOLLAR fine from the SEC, only to finally collapse
with basically every senior officer being arrested and/or sued into
oblivion. Now THAT's a spectacular collapse. Not to mention much
more involved and character-driven than "Client goes to Lawyer,
Lawyer screws client, Lawyer disbarred, the end." over and
over.
Pass.