Bleak Indeed

Darn. Seems that lawyers do, in fact, have a long history of working late hours, going back to the mid-nineteenth century, (if not even further back). I was holding out hope that these long work days were a passing fad.

From Charles Dickens' Bleak House:

It is night in Lincoln's Inn - perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day ... In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candle-light reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheepskin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry, these benefactors of the species linger yet, though office-hours be past: that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.