Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Alex Aldridge | The case of the sleepless lawyers

with large customers who pay to fix the calendar, the price is not adequate to rest

hidden deep within the huge glass and steel buildings as large corporate law firms are small London house, where rooms can be broken lawyers take a nap . Some are made in the style of Japanese capsule hotels, others are just old rooms with twin beds.

With its ability to evoke unpleasant memories of school, they tend not to be very popular. Most lawyers prefer the alternative of a cup of strong coffee, sometimes with a pint in the principles of the morning among workers in the meat market pubs near Smithfield.

But when the demands are such that a second night or even the third time in the office is necessary, as is common in the period prior to closing a big deal, these rooms so little strange usually fill quickly.

A former lawyer in a magic circle firm describes how life in these times. "One Sunday morning as I was the breakfast, I received a call from my boss asked me to come right now that I work day until 1 am, then went home to sleep. I was back in at 7 am from Monday to Tuesday to 6 hours. At that time I had three hours of sleep in the office before you start work again until Wednesday at noon and up to 7 -. which, God thank you, the case was closed "

Some people thrive on this sort of thing. Mark Vickers, a corporate partner at the law firm Ashurst City, in relation to work in a big deal to climb a mountain. "Sometimes it's a chore, but there is this tremendous sense of unity among those who share the experience," he said. "You tend to remember the little things. A couple of jokes about a Chinese man to carry three hours, the increasingly surreal jokes with his companions tired, the other half of the population back in the morning with the provision of clean clothes "

round the clock work cultures are also detrimental to the ability of law firms "to hang on the staff, schedules antisocial widely cited as the main cause of its high dropouts (18% only partners for businesses in the city of the law are women, although more women than men have joined these companies to the next level) and the systematic failure to withhold more than 55 lawyers.

And, of course, is the close relationship between long hours and stress, a factor cited in the suicides of Freshfields lawyer Matthew Courtney in 2007, SJ Berwin lawyer Catherine Bailey in 2009.

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