Eat What You Kill: The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer

I read this book on recommendation from a Penn Law Prof before I came to law school. It not only tells a great story, but for those in law or entering law it manages to tell that story while at the same time showing the trials and tribulations related to life in large law firms where the "eat what you kill" model is in place. It doesn't leave you pitying lawyers or try to send too strong a moral message, it just tells a real life story in a way that illustrates the unique pressures of this world.

Hats off to Professor Regan for his prodigious research and painstaking, vivid recreation of the saga of a prominent lawyer's startling rise and fall --an all-the-more remarkable achievement given Gellene's refusal to cooperate in this project. This is an amazing look-behind-the-curtain as to: how large law partnerships reward and penalize their producers and non-producers; how complicated bankruptcy negotiations unfold; how investment bankers and vulture investors exploit weakened corporations; how a brilliant professional succumbed under pressure to career-ending ethical blunders; and much more. An extremely valuable reading experience for practioners and students of law and business that deserves to be a best-seller.

Great book showing what can go wrong when law firms let top lawyers get away with violating common practices.

Read for: lessons in bankruptcy law and practice, junk bonds, vulture investment, corporate law generally, white collar crime and trial tactics, and a nuanced ethical exploration Avoid if: seeking simple answers, easily bored by thorough and balanced legal arguments "Eat What You Kill" explores in excruciating detail the rise and fall of John Gellene, bankruptcy attorney extraordinaire, who failed to disclose a conflict of interest which landed him in prison. Yet Milton Regan's book offers more than an ethics case study. A blow-by-blow survey of corporate restructuring, bankruptcy litigation tactics, and white collar criminal prosecution, Regan's book overwhelms with useful instruction. Though focused upon Gellene's life at law, Regan uses it as a prism to explore the environment of many others swimming in the same waters. Lay readers may find the professorial tone both vice and virtue, as the riches grow tiresome to anyone uninterested in following the pros, cons, counter-pros, and counter-cons of various litigation tactics and arguments. Within this web of contextual detail, the ethical story threads diverse legal doctrines. Offering no simple denunciations or defenses, Regan sees Gellene as merely a lawyer who tends to lie to avoid the consequences of his own negligence. Flawed, perhaps, but hardly a gross flaw. Refraining from potshots or praise permits Regan to hold Gellene accountable while looking more deeply into the practice of corporate law itself. Regan's conclusions seem to be that lawyers, preoccupied with the business of law, lose sight of its spirit.

A better read, simply as a page-turner, than many novels. Gellene, the protagonist/anti-hero of this book, graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Georgetown with degrees in philosophy and economics. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, then clerked for Justice Morris Pashman of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Pretty impressive resume, eh? He had the "world at his feet," yet before much more time had passed he was in a prison cell. This book should act as a warning on several levels. On one of them, it warns a certain type of investor about the nature of the chapter 11 process (in the course of which Gellene made the false statements that led to his downfall). Vulture investing in the instruments of distressed companies going through this process isn't an explicit theme of the book, one it ends up here nonetheless. There are traps for vultures, too.