Author Tucker Max is considered to be one of the founders of the 21st-century literary genre known as "fratire." The term, which combines "fraternity" and "satire," was introduced by The New York Times reporter Warren St. John in 2006. Most of Max's writing chronicles his drinking and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website TuckerMax.com, which has received millions of visitors since the author launched it as the result of a bet in 2000. A publishing phenom, his first book, 'I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell,' has spent over 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, with over 1 million copies sold. Overall, the author has sold more than 4.5 million books worldwide, and is only the fourth writer to have three books on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List at one time. In 2009, he was nominated to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List. Despite his reputation as a reckless party animal, Max graduated with highest honors from the University of Chicago in 1998, which earned him admission into several top U.S. law schools.
After Chicago, Max chose to attend Duke Law School, arriving at the Durham, North Carolina campus on an academic scholarship in the fall of 1998. According to Max, he knew right away that he wasn't interested in pursuing a legal career. So, instead of academics, he started to focus on more "entertaining" endeavors. As part of a law school bet, for instance, Max started a website full of stories about his own drunken adventures. It even featured an online date application.
Fired as a summer law associate, Max responded by penning a "legendary e-mail" about the incident. The story made the rounds of law schools and firms across the nation, and Max was subsequently banned from using career services at Duke Law. Nonetheless, Max managed to earn his Juris Doctor degree from Duke Law in 2001. According to the author, he accomplished this despite the fact that he neglected to purchase any of his textbooks for the final two years and spent one semester living in Cancun.
Since graduating, Max hasn't made much use of his Duke law degree. But that doesn't mean that his alma mater has completely forgotten about one of its more notorious graduates. In 2012, Max was featured in an article published by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, a 'think tank' that was founded at Duke in 1995. The article "Too Much Baggage?" questioned the legitimacy of Max's proposed $500,000 contribution to Planned Parenthood. Later, in 2021, Max's twentieth Law School reunion was held virtually because of the pandemic.