After the old goats were gone, a very diverse panel went to the front and continued with the storytelling. A black man, a white woman, a Hispanic, and a Korean — all partners — talked about the firm’s commitment to tolerance and equal rights and so on.

Later in the day, they ate shrimp and oysters on a private beach, then the buses were reloaded and headed back to Manhattan. They arrived after dark, and the weary young lawyers headed home for a short night.

For them, the concept of exhaustion was about to be redefined.

Any hope of pursuing meaningful work was promptly crushed at 7:30 Monday morning when all twelve new litigation associates were sent into the abyss of Document Review. As far back as the first year of law school, Kyle had heard horror stories of bright and eager young associates being marched into some dreary basement, chained to a desk, and given a mountain of densely worded documents to read. And while he’d known that his first year would include a generous dose of this punishment, he simply wasn’t prepared for it. He and Dale, who was looking better by the day but showing no signs of a personality, were assigned to a case involving a client that was being hammered in the financial press.

Their new boss for the day, a senior associate named Karleen, called them into her office and explained things. For the next few days they would review some crucial documents, billing at least eight hours a day at $300 an hour. That would be their rate until the bar results were made known in November, and, assuming they passed, their hourly rate would jump to $400.

There was no thought given to a quick word about what might happen if they did not pass the bar exam. Scully & Pershing associates posted a pass rate of 92 percent the previous year, and it was simply assumed that everyone had passed.

Eight hours was the minimum, at least for now, and with lunch and coffee thrown in, that meant, roughly, a ten-hour day. Start no later than 8:00 a.m., and nobody ever thought about leaving before 7:00 p.m.

In case they were curious, Karleen billed twenty-four hundred hours last year. She had been with the firm for five years and acted as though she were a lifer. A future partner. Kyle glanced around her well-appointed office and noticed a diploma from Columbia Law School. There was a photo of a younger Karleen on a horse, but none of her with a husband, boyfriend, or children.

She was explaining that there was a chance that a partner might need Kyle or Dale for a quick project, so be prepared. Document Review was certainly not glamorous, but it was the safety net for all new associates. “You can always go there and find work that can be billed,” Karleen said. “Eight hours minimum, but there is no max.”

How delightful, thought Kyle. If for some reason ten hours a day were not enough, the door to Document Review was always wide open for more.

Their first case involved a client with the slightly ludicrous name of Placid Mortgage — ludicrous in Kyle’s opinion, but he kept his mouth shut as Karleen rattled off the more salient facts of the case. Starting in 2001, when a new wave of government regulators took over and adopted a less intrusive attitude, Placid and other huge home mortgage companies became aggressive in their pursuit of new loans. They advertised heavily, especially on the Internet, and convinced millions of lower- and middle-class Americans that they could indeed afford to buy homes that they actually could not afford. The bait was the old adjustable-rate mortgage, and in the hands of crooks like Placid it was adjusted in ways never before imagined. Placid sucked them in, went light on the paperwork, collected nice fees up front, then sold the crap in the secondary markets. The company was not holding the paper when the overheated real estate market finally crashed, home values plummeted, and foreclosures became rampant.

Karleen used much softer language in her summary, but Kyle had known for some time that his firm was representing Placid. He’d read a dozen stories about the mortgage meltdown and seen the name Scully & Pershing mentioned often, always in defense of Placid’s latest setback.

Now the lawyers were trying to clean up the mess. Placid had been battered by lawsuits, but the worst one was a class action involving thirty-five thousand of its former borrowers. It had been filed in New York a year earlier.

Karleen led them to a long, dungeonlike room with no windows, a concrete floor, poor lighting, and neat stacks of white cardboard boxes with the words “Placid Mortgage” stamped on the end. It was the mountain Kyle had heard so much about. The boxes, as Karleen explained, contained the files of all thirty-five thousand plaintiffs. Each file had to be reviewed.

“You’re not alone,” Karleen said with a fake laugh, just as both Kyle and Dale were about to resign. “We have other associates and even some paralegals on this review.” She opened a box, pulled out a file about an inch thick, and went through a quick summary of what the litigation team was looking for.

“Someday in court,” she said gravely, “it will be crucial for our litigators to be able to tell the judge that we have examined every document in this case.”

Kyle assumed it was also crucial for the firm to have clients who could pay through the nose for such useless work. He was suddenly dizzy with the realization that in just a few short minutes, he would punch in and begin charging $300 an hour for his time. He was worth nothing close to that. He wasn’t even a lawyer.

Karleen left them there, her heels clicking on the polished concrete as she hustled out of the room. Kyle gawked at the boxes, then at Dale, who looked as stunned as he did. “You gotta be kidding,” he said. But Dale was determined to prove something, so she grabbed a box, dropped it on the table, and yanked out some files. Kyle walked to the other end of the room, as far away as possible, and found himself some files.

He opened one and glanced at his watch — it was 7:50. Scully lawyers billed by tenths. A tenth of an hour is six minutes. Two-tenths is twelve, and so on. One point six hours is an hour and thirty-six minutes. Should he roll back the clock two minutes, to 7:48, and therefore be able to bill two-tenths before the hour of eight? Or should he stretch his arms, take a sip of coffee, get more situated, and wait until 7:54 to begin his first billable minute as a lawyer? It was a no-brainer. This was Wall Street, where everything was done with aggression. When in doubt, bill aggressively. If not, the next guy will, and then you won’t catch him.

It took an hour to read every word in the file. One point two hours to be exact, and suddenly he had no reluctance in billing Placid for 1.2 hours, or $360 for the review. Not long ago, say about ninety minutes, he found it hard to believe he was worth $300 an hour. He hadn’t even passed the bar! Now, though, he had been converted. Placid owed him the money because their sleaze had gotten them sued. Someone had to plow through their debris. He would aggressively bill the company out of revenge. Down the table, Dale worked diligently without any distraction.

Somewhere in the midst of the third file, Kyle paused long enough to ponder a few things. Still on the clock, he wondered where the Trylon-Bartin room was. Where were the highly classified documents, and how were they protected? What kind of vault were they stored in? This dungeon appeared to be security-free, but then who would spend money to protect a bunch of mortgage files gone bad? If Placid had dirty laundry, you could bet it wasn’t buried where Kyle might find it.

He thought about his life. Here, in the third hour of his professional career, he was already questioning his sanity. What manner of man could sit here and pore over these meaningless pages for hours and days without going bonkers? What did he expect the life of a first-year associate to be? Would it be any better at another firm?