VIII

• Author: Lindsay Cameron
• Profession: Corporate attorney
• Pages: 75-81

75

8

T    advice I received in law school came from my

roommate, who’d spent a summer working in Biglaw a year before

I did. “e one thing you should never do is cry,” she’d warned.

“e men who work in Biglaw are oended by human weakness.”

I’d snickered, but late that night I quietly Googled ways to prevent

yourself from crying. “Create a slightly painful sensation to redirect

your attention,” the article from Glamour suggested. “at way your

mind focuses on physical pain rather than an external stressor.” I

remember looking in the mirror that night while biting the inside of

my cheek, ensuring it was an innocuous method to keep myself from

letting the tears ow. Since then I’ve only had to enlist the method a

few times, but today the inside of my mouth was chewed raw.

“You got o easy, Mackenzie.” Sadir popped his head over the

partition.

“Easy?” I repeated in astonishment, my voice shaky from the lat-

est tirade I’d just endured in Saul’s oce. “How do you gure?”

I thought I’d nally gotten used to Saul’s yelling, the way someone

with a backache gets used to dull, constant pain. Today he’d upped

the ante, though, ripping up the document I’d spent hours draing

into tiny pieces, while screeching “REDO IT! REDO IT! REDO IT!”

I’d never seen anything like it. His entire face and neck were crimson

red, except for the purple vein throbbing in his forehead, as he scat-

tered the tiny pieces around his oce wildly. He looked completely

unhinged. ankfully, my primal survival instincts took over and I

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