And day number three...

...of getting home past midnight. Tonight, it was work, but in all fairness, it was also an hour of socializing with 1Ls who were somehow visiting the firm, and an hour eating Indian food. I only billed a little more than 9 hours today, even though I was at the office from 10 am to 12:30 am.

Funny that the last week should be the one where I get a lot of work; the other three had several days where I was twiddling my thumbs.

If you're wondering what kind of work I did tonight, it was monkey work: transferring figures from several financial spreadsheets to a document related to an IPO (difficult only in that the info was in a different format in the financials and required hunting around) and going through a couple hundred pages of another 2 offering documents checking the (in the end, very few) edits that had been made by someone else.

Interesting takes on firm life and this firm, though. I had lunch with the junior associate I feel most akin to, and got honest answers about what it's like. Then I had an impromptu chat with a more senior associate. And then Sunshine, my office mate, gave her two cents. In brief (and in reductionist descriptives):

- Junior associate: Caucasian woman in her late 20s, worked for the feds for a few years before law school, majored in Chinese and political science. She was pretty open about not having imagined herself in this job when she went to law school. "It's tough," she said, "I'm not going to lie to you." I asked how bad "bad" was, and she said, "Probably staying until 1 or 2 each night for a week or 2 weeks in a row. But it's not the hours. It's the stress. You get so much responsibility, and they forget that you don't really know how to do all the stuff they expect from you." She thought the firm was behind in China, that the HK branch wasn't supported by the mothership, even though it was bringing in a lot of money, and that the partners didn't really take care of the associates. But, she said, "if you know it's for a certain period of time, then it's bearable."

- More senior associate: Jewish man, 30, worked for a Mighty Big Firm in NY before shifting over to this firm, proficient in Japanese. He wanted to let me know that Big Firm life in NY wasn't that bad. "It's not true that you don't ever get real work there. There are more people between you and the partner, yes, that's true. There's a buffer zone, but that's not necessarily a bad thing." He mentioned that the work wasn't interesting or important, and I asked him what he'd ever worked on that was. A pro bono project, he said. And he continued, "I wish I had the courage to quit and spend a year learning Korean or something." But what's to stop you, my friend?

- Sunshine: Chinese American woman, 27, majored in econ, went straight to law school and started out at this firm. She admitted, "I'm the closest to having drunk the Kool-Aid. I like my job. If I didn't like it, I don't know how I could not just quit. It's really stressful, and I don't handle stress well. And when you're single and your family's far away -- that's the hardest part for me." She went on to say that the corporate versus non-corporate choice was at some level already decided, just the way everyone decides to go to law school even though lawyer job satisfaction is among the lowest of all professions. "I really like the traveling," she said. "I think if I had to work all day in the office, every day, the monotony would get to me. But you get to go on a plane and you're supposed to do work, but you sleep and no one can reach you, and then you get to go to your hotel..." She also said that it was self-selective -- people came here because they didn't want to be like everyone else.

I asked someone last night, an associate who's taking a leave of absence after 7 years of working as a lawyer, "Should I come work here?" and she replied, "It depends on what you want." Isn't that always what it comes down to?

I could pay off my loans very, very quickly here -- with a housing allowance and food being very cheap, there's very little I'd spend my money on. I spend money on trips and experiences, and I wouldn't have time to do that if I worked here. And I liked working late tonight, weirdly enough. It felt like crunch time at exams, but with everyone working toward common goals instead of competing with each other. Of course, I've only been working hard for a few days. But the feeling in the office was collegial and friendly, and everyone seems to deal with stress pretty well.

It would be nice to be in Asia again too, and only four hours from Seoul. I continue to be worried about my dad's health (he hasn't answered my queries about his biopsy, and I'm starting to fear the worst). And really, if I don't try to keep up my Korean now, when will I ever?

As I told the junior associate, I see a big Pro/Con poster in my near future. But in my immediate future, I see a nice, firm, fluffy-pillowed bed.