In my line of work, unfortunately it is not possible to limit ourselves to the hours that would be convenient for us. Lawyers are in a client-service profession and if our client gets served with a subpoena after hours, we have to deal with it. On the corporate law side, if our client wants a deal done in three days and that means enlisting our California and Asia office attorneys to work on it so that the client can get round the clock service and have the work done on time, we do it.
It's not a civilized way to do business and I believe it is the by-product of firms and corporations treating each other like entities and not groups of people who have families and lives. To me, my client is an investment bank, not an analyst who would really like to get home early enough to attend her daughter's ballet recital, or a banker who has dinner plans with his fiancee that he doesn't want to break for the third night in a row. Similarly, their lawyer is an entity that bears the name of three long-dead white men, not someone trying to plan her roommate's surprise birthday party while working until past midnight on a Friday. Like I said, this isn't a civilized way to do business, but it is the way American business is done and other parts of the world are moving more toward our model, as opposed to us moving toward theirs. If you have money in a pension, 401K, or IRA, it is the fund managers handling your money who are putting the pressure on our clients to burn the candle at both ends to achieve results. Our clients cannot succeed if their advisors don't work the same obscene hours they do.
Companies can fall apart and thousands of people could lose their jobs if a legal problem is dealt with improperly. Our clients pay us rather handsomely to ensure that that is not the case. As a result, we're expected to work until the job is done and to make sure it is done right the first time. We wouldn't be worth our salaries were that not the case. We all knew when we accepted the job and the perks that went with it, that long hours were expected. People who don't want to put that sort of strain on themselves and their families go part time or leave the firm. It's not a fair trade off, but work in finance is unlikely to get kinder and gentler unless shareholders decide that they are happy with smaller returns.
