Saturday night I reunited with The Lawyerfriends, which meant an evening of copious vodka tonics and yet another round of “Whose Life Sucks the Worst,” the game where we stand around relating tales about work to determine who wins the trophy for abject misery. This time, there was little contest; one friend was the hands down winner with her account of a recent summer associate dinner. After two hours of wooing clueless summers with innocuous smalltalk and 5 dozen Malpeques on the half shell followed by seared Ahi steaks with bountiful Pinot Grigio, she checked her blackberry before dessert only to discover a midlevel associate’s email instructing her to come back to the office. At the thought of returning for a 10th straight night of working until 1:30 or 2 a.m., she promptly burst into tears and began sobbing at the table as the summers stared in bewildered horror. Too tired to acknowledge the sting of socially awkward embarrasment, she mumbled a watery excuse about feeling sick and fled to the bathroom. When she told me the story, I declared this round of the game officially closed.

She’s not alone in having been reduced to tears over work. Most of the female associates I know have dissolved into wailing lamentations at one point or another over this job. We’re hardly frail, delicate women, we smashed knees in NCAA field hockey and hauled 50-pound frame packs up Kangchenjunga after the bar exam, but there is only so much sleep deprivation combined with emotional abuse that a person can stand before losing it, and most women prefer to simply expel the overdose of dejection with a brief weepy breakdown rather than retreat into silent brooding depression like our male counterparts.

Law firms foster the classic downward spiral effect: when you start working late and losing sleep, the quality of your work (not to mention morale) tends to decline, so you’re more likely to open an even larger window for verbal abuse. The climax typically involves an associate cowering under her desk in a pool of muffled tears. It’s hard to soothe someone who has reached that point; a few months ago a friend from a neighboring firm called me crying at her desk, she told me through snuffly sobs how a notorious Reichmaster partner had berated her for 10 minutes over a bungled research project and closed his tirade with the charming finisher: “You are fucking useless.” Exhausted, broken, vanquished, this 30-year-old whipsmart lawyer with multiple Ivy League degrees was reduced to a puffy-eyed whimpering mass of used tissues drowning in dispirited woe. I did my best to console her with assurances that said partner was a stupendous asshole with likely marital problems and a nagging Napoleon complex, and when I had her laughing in between phlemmy sniffles I figured my positive karmic deed for the day was complete.