Set in America’s rough-and-tumble capital, where high-powered lawyers eat their foes for breakfast and their friends for lunch, this subversive satire spills the secrets of BigLaw and explores race, gender, and class in the rarefied but ruthless world of white-shoe law.

Brilliant and beautiful, Violet’s a Black attorney who’s parlayed hard luck into good luck. She’s up for partner at a premier litigation firm. To succeed, Violet must maintain her near-spotless record. But Violet stumbles, and her personal and professional lives collide.

Neither Violet nor her husband—Roma, a Russian academic—speaks WASP. No wonder they bungle an admission interview for their twins at a posh private school. Violet acts as if it’s the end of days; Roma thinks she should relax. That kind of thinking—not to mention lust and maybe love—propels Violet into the arms of an Other Guy. He’s like her husband, only fun, fresh, and forbidden.

A different F word comes to Violet’s mind when a senior partner buttonholes her into defending the school in a race/gender discrimination suit, the result of a soured affair between the school’s white headmaster and a Black administrator/teacher. All too soon, Violet confronts facts she’d rather not face—about her children’s admission, the case against the school, and her colleagues’ seamier sides. All too late, Violet learns that Other Guy’s both friend and foe—and that getting the law right may not save her from being on the wrong side of BigLaw. Instead of being fitted with golden handcuffs, Violet fears she’ll be barred from entering the golden gates.

Toggling between dark comedy and light drama, UP FOR PARTNER transports the reader into the shark tank where lawsuits—and, with them, careers and relationships—flourish and perish.