Unbillable Hours

My wife gave me a Kindle.

I know!

So one of the things that happened next was that I started trolling around for free content. I'd already accumulated several ebooks that I transferred onto it (things like Shatnerquake, From the Ashes of Courage, Transgression, Clash of the Geeks and more) but I decided to also glance around to see if there were any interesting free things to add. I ran across a book called Unbillable Hours by Ian Graham, which was temporarily available as a free download, and it looked interesting, so I got it. Today, it's not available for Kindle at all.

I started reading it and got sucked right in. It's sort of a cross between a John Grisham thriller and The Associates. I loved it.

It's a memoir of a young lawyer who's wined and dined by a giant LA law firm and who subsequently gets sucked into the mind-numbing drudgery that is low level law work. Soon, however, he's drawn into a pro-bono case that takes all of his time - the unbillable hours of the title - and serves to fundamentally change his view of law practice.

The case in question involved Mario Rocha, a young man who was convicted of murder but was, quite obviously to all but the prosecution, innocent. The details of the case are fascinating, as is the story of Graham's involvement with it. His writing is crisp and draws you right in. I really enjoyed it.

And it made me really glad I didn't go to law school.