Every year, thousands of the most perfect young Americans apply for admission to Harvard Law School. And every year, the fabled institution of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Kissinger, and five ninths of the current Supreme Court, the school whose name inspires reverence from garbagemen and presidents alike, replies with a thin envelope containing a single sheet of woven-cotton stationery that says, essentially, Fuck you.

Harvard Law School seeks inner beauty. It desires passion, creativity, interestingness in its applicants and thinks nothing of rejecting Yale's top undergrad if that undergrad is an anal-retentive bore. Furious parents of straight-A student-council presidents have been known to make the pilgrimage to Cambridge to demand justice for their rejected offspring, and admissions officers might gently suggest the word intangibles to explain the kid's shortcomings. Hip Harvard Law School students take in the spectacle and smirk.

Smirking, in fact, might be the official facial expression

of Harvard Law School. At least it was when I was graduated from there ten years ago. And why not? As a Harvard Law student, you've got the world by the balls. The degree, the most potent, fearsome weapon in all of academia, confers upon its holder a near guarantee of riches, freedom, prestige, and happiness. Listening to those parents hopelessly invoking the virtues of their well-bred sons and daughters, we knew we had it made. We knew we were the complete package. We knew we were golden.

THE CLASS MOTHER HEN sends me the phone directory he's been compiling. He doesn't flinch at the word souls when I tell him I'm interested in exploring what happened to the souls of the class of '90. "Get ready to be depressed, man," he says. "You won't find all that many people, at least those still in law, who love their lives."

I open the directory. There's the guy who impaled himself on the metal volleyball spike during an intramural basketball game. Here's the math major who, in surveying the women in our class, lamented that "at Harvard Law, it appears brains times beauty equals a constant." There's Andrea, maybe the most brilliant mind in the class, who included this melancholy note by her entry: "So much for visions of changing the world . . ."

I reach a guy who went to divinity school in order to resolve inner questions that cropped up about the universe. "You start dealing with those issues," he says. "You can't show up in a law firm and really care about another merger." I catch up with a roommate who ditched his firm to become a big shot at Motown and is now the point man at a risky Internet start-up. An old buddy, suffering as a real estate lawyer, tells me that he fantasizes about using the blood money he's saved to buy a "faraway convenience store."

A former hippie type now writes the television program The Street and an occasional Ally McBeal. He has no job security, but he's happier than hell and couldn't fathom going back to law. A woman who loved science fiction and crossword puzzles left law to sell cruises and is now a part-time secretary with a temp agency. "A failure, I know," she says, "but I'm finding myself--and at least I'm out of the firms." One partner at one of the country's fanciest firms confides that he's finalizing plans to quit his job. "I'll go crazy if I stay," he says. "But please don't print anything more about me. If my plan folds, I'll still need the firm."

One after another, those who have left law, especially law firms, seem happy. Those who have not are suffering or, worse, resigned. They talk about losing themselves. These are strange times in the workplace, and one need only look to Harvard Law School for example. Harvard doesn't keep such statistics, so it's difficult to tell with precision, but a look through the current class directory reveals that fewer than half the members of the Class of 1990 work in firms and roughly a quarter of those with entries do not appear to practice law. Young people for whom the world of work opened its arms as a mother would have forsaken their degrees and found another line of work. More vow to leave the law with the next infusion of cash or gumption. What happened, I ask my classmates, to the days when we had the world by the balls? What happened to the days when we were golden?

"I don't believe we thought much about happiness as young men. If you had a steady job with decent pay and a good family at home, that was a pretty fine life. The chance to go to a top law school and get a good job, one you knew would set you apart, well, we thought that was pretty good. And the idea of quitting law after you'd studied for years and had all that opportunity? Why would anyone do that?"

--robert hupp, class of 1950, partner, murphy,

hupp & kinnally, aurora, illinois

"I hate my job, man. I'm dying to get out of here. I'm dying to talk about it with someone. I thought all weekend that if I talk to you for your story, maybe that will give me the momentum I need to quit. I know you said I could remain confidential. But there's always that one tenth of one percent chance someone will figure out it's me. And I can't put this job in jeopardy. I know that's depressing, but that's the way it's gotta be. So sorry, man. I can't talk to you."

--anonymous, class of 1990, partner at a large

east coast law firm

Victor Bernace

SOMEWHERE NEAR THE BOTTOM of his sock drawer, Victor Bernace keeps one of his few happy childhood memories. It's a photograph, and the star of the picture is none other than Victor, all of eight years old, grinning and clutching a wad of money--must be a million dollars there--and hoisting that dough into the air as if he's conquered the world, which is exactly what his father told him to do with his life just seconds before he said, Smile, and pressed the shutter. And even though the kid in the picture is clutching just a pile of typing paper cut into money shapes, his father said, Keep that picture and look at it, Victor; make a million dollars, get the American dream. And Victor kept the picture and he still looks at it, even though he can't remember how old he was when his father died from alcoholism and his mother started trying to murder him.

No one spoke English at Victor's house in Chicago, only Spanish, but the family had a TV, so he studied cartoons, learning grammar from Bugs Bunny and vocabulary from Scooby-Doo. His dad made ends meet as a waiter, not at a joint, but at one of Chicago's grand hotels, the kind, he'd tell Victor, where guests don't hear plates clinking and they get three forks. Victor figures he might have been nine when his family moved to Inwood, the hardscrabble section on the northernmost tip of Manhattan, and his father died of cirrhosis. By then, he knew his mother was nuts. While Victor was figuring how to become the man of the house, his mother kept telling him he was going to die tomorrow, that she was the chosen woman dressed in white in the Bible who gives birth to the man-child, and it was all tinged with sexual themes, like Victor would be a virgin forever and die a virgin. She tried to poison Victor twice. The people at Bellevue Hospital, where Mrs. Bernace resided after trying to kill Victor, called it paranoid schizophrenia, and Victor was sent to a foster home. Victor didn't mind so much that schoolteachers believed he was retarded and needed special ed. All Victor knew was that he was always hungry and that childhood--except for Charlie's Angels and science-fiction library books--didn't feel so good.

Andrea Kramer

FIRST GRADE IS WHEN MOST kids learn what sound a T makes. First grade is when Andrea Kramer started reading astronomy books.

Were she not cute in just the way it's great to be cute at six--apple cheeks, boy crushes, rapid-fire giggle--Andrea might have been pegged by classmates as pure dork. By second grade, she had shunned Barbies to learn about space flight. Her parents, neither of whom had graduated from college, watched in wonder as she slew math puzzles intended for boys who had already shaved.

What her mom and dad didn't see was that during second grade, Andrea was also studying the poverty of her Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan. In the Bowery, Andrea found a spot where she could watch bums sleep outside vacant tenements. To her mind, which swooned at the justice inherent in math problems, there was no equilibrium in homeless human beings sleeping outside empty homes. While the bums dozed, Andrea fantasized about saving them, and when she was eight, she announced at the dinner table that that's exactly what she intended to do with her life.

Chris Crain

CHRIS CRAIN'S FATHER rose from Kroger bag boy to vice-president of the grocery behemoth, and, by God, it was no accident. When a man lives the strict Christian life, when he gives generously to Pat Robertson and keeps a traditional southern home and leads Boy Scouts and community groups, he can achieve the American dream. And so, of course, can his children.

The second of three children, Chris shone brightest of the perfect Crain offspring. By 1974, the fourth grader was a Boy Scout, a little gentleman of "yes, sir"s and "no, ma'am"s who made straight A's and was known to pals as "Crain-Brain."

Around the Crains' dinner table, talk was archconservative, and it was discussion without dissent. The Crain children were expected to trust in Christ and the Republican party, to set examples for other youngsters, and to attend church modestly dressed. They were not, despite their desires, to watch Happy Days or Laverne & Shirley, perfect examples of the extent to which profanity had infected family television. Sex talk, naturally, was impermissible in the Crain household, so when it came time at thirteen for Chris's birds-and-bees discussion, his parents instead gave him a book titled The Christian Approach to Sex, in which, he remembers, the author explained that "the penis fits into the vagina like a key into a keyhole." Chris wondered if a man therefore must turn his penis once it's inside, but it was a fleeting question. More important, he wondered why he couldn't stop thinking about touching another boy's penis. And he wondered this especially during prayer time in church, when the congregation closed its eyes and couldn't see him crying.

Greg Giraldo

KIDS WHO PULL STRAIGHT A'S in grade school don't often scare teachers. But for all his smarts, Greg Giraldo couldn't focus in fifth grade, and it disturbed those in charge. The kid from Queens daydreamed about funny people, guys who made other guys laugh. How thrilling to live at a time when John Belushi roamed the earth! How glorious to be Mad magazine artist Don Martin and to invent words like thwap and glork! Watch the face of a kid in love with laughter; it's not a face that soothes the schoolteacher's soul.

Mr. and Mrs. Giraldo were summoned to school and asked, Is something wrong at home? Is something troubling Greg? Nothing that we know of, the parents replied. And they returned home and asked Greg if there was something wrong. Not that I know of, he replied, and he returned to recording funny little thoughts in the journals he kept. Mom and Dad couldn't protest much; Greg was a perfect student, the kind who might fulfill an immigrant parent's dream that he become a doctor or a lawyer, or, better yet, an Ivy League doctor or lawyer. Or, best yet, a Harvard doctor or lawyer.

A HARVARD LAW SCHOOL graduate could expect in 1960 to bill fifteen hundred hours a year at a major big-city law firm. In return, he was virtually certain to make partner in six years, share in the firm's profits, and enjoy a collegial, relaxed, lifetime position of prestige. His desk and office would be kept for him until he died, sometimes for years after, as a show of respect.

Today's Harvard Law School graduate can expect to bill twenty-two hundred hours a year, and often as many as twenty-four hundred. In return, he stands perhaps a one-in-eight chance at making partner after eight years, and even then he might not share profits. As a partner, he will never be allowed to relax; if his revenues or hours drop, he will be invited to resign. When a Harvard Law School graduate fails to make partner, he is seen as the worst kind of failure by colleagues and prospective employers, because he entered with staggering advantages and promise. If he does make it to partner, then to retirement, no one will think to keep his desk around.

"Young Harvard lawyers are less content today than we were. They work harder, longer hours. They don't have the time to indulge themselves, to become Renaissance people. My classmates still believed that it was possible to go to plays--every night if we wished--to learn music, to have intellectual discourses. We led pretty decent lives in the law firms. Today, a Harvard Law graduate comes in conditioned to give up large parts of his life for a number of years. I don't know if it's a pretty decent life."

--samuel b. fortenbaugh iii, class of 1960, former managing partner at morgan, lewis & bockius, new york

"I have so much to say about this job. I have fantasies about leaving. There's not a day I don't think about buying a cabin somewhere and just leaving it all. But I can't do it. I'm a pussy. You know, we didn't get into Harvard Law School by taking chances. Most of us are conservative. Except that being conservative is fucking killing me. Now I have to be conservative again. I can't talk to you. I hope you find someone who will talk--God knows there's enough of us suffering out there. But knowing our class-.-.-.-well, good luck."

--anonymous no. 2, class of 1990, partner at a large east coast law firm

Victor Bernace

VICTOR'S MOTHER BELIEVED that only religion could save the world. Or if not the world, at least Victor. With her son in tow, she joined the Mormon Church, the Catholic Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses. During sermons she'd stand and shout, "I'm the woman! I'm the woman! My son is the chosen child! He must die!" And it embarrassed Victor, not because of what she said, but because the church elders always asked them to leave, and each time it felt more like Victor would never find a family. Maybe it was during church one day that Victor found that he stuttered, a stutter he worked hard to cure, a stutter about which he asks friends even today, "I've gotten rid of it, right?"

The teachers bright enough not to equate Victor's stutter with mental retardation realized that the withdrawn, always-hungry-for-lunch sixth grader was reading at college level. They saw to it that he skipped eighth grade. They enrolled him in Kennedy High School's law program, an eighth-floor safe haven for bright kids with leadership ability. To Victor, these teachers seemed clairvoyant. He knew from reading books that leaders were often lawyers, and he wanted nothing more than to be a leader.

Challenged academically and now in possession of a dream, Victor began pulling straight A's in high school, doing better than kids with supportive parents and plenty of food. He became his own father and mother during high school, finished second in the law program, and applied only to NYU, City College, and Manhattan College, three schools to which he could afford to commute. When the girl who finished third decided to attend Princeton, Victor wondered how she could afford bus fare to New Jersey. He chose NYU, which offered him full tuition.

At NYU, Victor majored in history, his first love, but he changed to philosophy because history textbooks were too expensive and in philosophy they'd debate a paragraph for a week, which was cheaper. When it came time to apply to law school, Victor had a 3.7 GPA and a lofty admissions-test score.

Harvard waived the application fee, then admitted Victor nearly as soon as they read his essay. In it, Victor said that he'd struggled in life but still wanted to be a leader. Congratulations, Harvard wrote Victor, we'd love to have you.

Victor decided to turn down Harvard Law School. Didn't see how he could afford bus fare all the way to Boston. His childhood friend Ben pleaded. Are you nuts, Victor? I'll drive you. For free, goddammit. Please, Victor, trust me. Victor still has the picture in his album. "Me and my friend," as Victor remembers it, "in August on the way to Cambridge."

Andrea Kramer

BY SOPHOMORE YEAR in high school, Andrea was first in her class and duplicating the perfect math scores only the legendary Ricky and Lenny had achieved before her. By seventeen, Andrea had her pick of colleges. She chose Wellesley, the prestigious Massachusetts all-women school, because in addition to desiring first-rate academics, she felt she had become a little too defined by her penchant for boys (with whom she still got really ditsy), and it was time to get serious with life.

At Wellesley, Andrea began her push to change the world by running for various class offices. She was defeated each time as reality trumped ideals; elections at Wellesley were popularity contests, and she was never popular enough. But Wellesley was still glorious to Andrea. She found a soul mate in a sociology professor, and their change-the-world talks would go on for hours. Does practice advance theory or vice versa? Just look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964--professors didn't do that! One night, after a long conversation and a good dozen cups of tea, they agreed that Andrea could do the most good for the world by changing practice, not theory. And that meant law school--the best goddamned law school you can find. Andrea used the essay portion of her application to inform Harvard Law School that she felt an obligation, a calling from her soul, to help people.

Chris Crain

WHEN GOD IGNORES a teenager, who picks up the slack? Ashamed of his sexual fantasies, Chris willed himself to be the most perfect of young southern gentlemen, a straight-A nice guy who never smoked or sipped a beer and who dated girls but wouldn't take advantage. No homosexual behaved like that. Did those San Francisco weirdos in their mascara and leather cop uniforms go to church every Sunday and join Eagle Scouts and become editor of the high school newspaper and co-valedictorian? How many of them intended to marry a woman once God helped cure their perverted fantasies? Time, discipline, and more prayer, Chris resolved. In the meantime, he found himself developing a fire in his belly for journalism that almost made the world seem right.

At Vanderbilt, Chris joined the school newspaper, thrilled to the idea of muckraking, and rose quickly to editor in chief. Senior year, Chris began writing freelance for The Tennessean in Nashville, and his stories made the front page. He lost himself when he wrote; time disappeared, and with it much of his inner agony.

During one college class that touched on the Constitution, the instructor employed the Socratic method, the famously intimidating teaching style of Harvard Law School. Chris fell in love with the challenge, decided then and there to apply to law school. Those who knew him considered it a splendid idea, except for another of his favorite professors, who told Chris that law school would stunt his ability to think and write creatively, which he viewed as Chris's true calling. Chris thought the comment odd; law school was supposed to train a student to think and write, and besides, the whole world believed law school to be about the finest next step for a promising young man. When the thick envelope arrived from Harvard, that lone professor's words were already ancient history.

Greg Giraldo

THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT ever paid to Greg Giraldo came when his pals in Queens refused to believe he'd been admitted to Manhattan's prestigious Regis High School. We never knew you had a brain, they told their friend. We thought you were a fucking retard.

Once inside, Greg tore up the place. Shunning nerdiness, he pulled A's without losing his affection for the word fuck or his taste for the off-color joke. He read great literature, not because he was an egghead, but because Swift and Shakespeare were damn funny guys who knew how to construct a joke. His classmates dug his memory for Saturday Night Live dialogue, and they'll still tell you that his Eddie Murphy impressions were scary good. The Jesuits--great teachers, to Greg's mind--appreciated passion in a student, whatever the passion, so no one panicked about the joke-and-gag notebooks Greg continued to assemble. In a school where the graduates matriculated to Ivy League colleges as a matter of routine, Greg was getting Columbia University to commit to him early.

And Columbia would be great. Greg would live downtown, keep his friends, and enjoy the kind of life that comes with having the kind of non-dickwad, covertly cool brain that sneaks up on people.

Columbia proved to be no sweat; he'd already read half the books assigned to English majors. Around junior year, he began to hear what many verbally talented college kids hear from well-meaning mentors: Go to law school if you're good with words and like to argue. Sounds good, Greg figured. And if I can get into Harvard Law School, I'll be rich to boot. Without studying a lick for the entrance exam, he scored in the 99th percentile, deity territory to those who cared about such things, which he didn't. He got the thick envelope from Harvard, and while he still had no clue what lawyers did for a living, he figured it was time to go out and make his parents proud.

ABOUT 80 PERCENT of incoming Harvard Law School students express a desire to practice public-interest law. After graduation, fewer than 5 percent work in that sector. This despite the school's offer to forgive the loans of students who take lower-income jobs.

Most students arrive at Harvard Law School having refused full scholarships from other law schools. Harvard Law School offers no merit scholarships; it provided an average of just $9,700 last year in need-based aid, and then only to a quarter of its students. Tuition this year is $25,000; room, board, and fees, another $16,430. By graduation, many in the class will have incurred debts in excess of $120,000.

"A young lady recently said to me, 'I understand you graduated from Harvard Law School in 1940.' She wanted to know how much I made when I joined the firm. When I told her I earned $300 a month, she asked if I felt bad watching new lawyers in Chicago start at $90,000. Well, I told her, my tuition at Harvard Law School was $400 a year, and we paid as we went. Yours was $25,000 a year. When I graduated, no one owned me."

--stephen milwid, class of 1940, retired partner at lord, bissell and brook, chicago

"My dream is to become a clerk at Barnes & Noble. Not the manager or the guy who orders the books, but the lowliest clerk they've got. I've got the store picked out. I literally fantasize about this. I'm disappointed in myself. I'm not who I thought I would be. I thought I'd be doing something meaningful. Beyond that, I can't talk to you."

--anonymous no. 3, class of 1990, partner at a large east coast law firm

Victor Bernace

SATAN SENT VICTOR to law school, so his mother took what little money they had saved and flushed it down the toilet. Victor ate just cornflakes and water--then just water--for two weeks and lost twenty pounds. His first day at Harvard Law School, he asked the school for an emergency loan. When they asked why, he said he needed to eat. They thought he was joking.

By the end of the first day of classes, Victor stood in awe of his classmates. Never did he imagine that so many brilliant people could exist in one place. At NYU--a good school, to be sure--maybe half the people did the assigned reading. Here at HLS, everyone did the reading, and then everyone did the optional reading. Not ninety-nine out of one hundred, everyone. Though he was shy and didn't dare announce this aloud, he thought of ancient Greece when he thought about Harvard Law School, how the Greeks would assemble in central places to debate great ideas, and how every Greek was equal. And that's what Harvard Law School was to Victor--a magnificent idea center where all the students were equal, where Victor and the rich kids all had the same professors and the same health plans. When he was elected class representative during his first semester, Victor called it the happiest day of his life and dreamed of how wonderful it must feel to be a politician.

His first summer, Victor took a job with the New York City corporation counsel. The position sounded perfect--he'd deal with clients and gain real battlefield experience, benefits that reportedly didn't accrue to summer associates at big law firms. That the position turned into a twelve-week library-research project didn't sour Victor much; he'd simply find more meaningful work next summer.

Victor began to groove academically during his second year. Local Government Law class resonated with him because it required a consideration of real people, not just dry facts. His second summer, he accepted a six-week public- interest gig with a Puerto Rican legal-defense fund, then flew to Ecuador to wage a six-week defense of abused kids. Latin American countries, he learned, didn't provide safety nets for hurting children the way the United States had provided welfare and food stamps and foster homes for Victor.

Third year is for chilling at Harvard Law School. Students load up on electives, join clubs, hang out. Mostly, they select careers. Standing in line during fall registration, Victor decided that it was time to lock in a job offer and to give the big Manhattan law firms a try. He made his way to Career Services, asked to see the list of New York firms conducting on-campus interviews, and signed his name to the best of them.

Andrea Kramer

BY THE TIME SHE walked onto the Harvard Law School campus in 1987, Andrea was already a civil-rights attorney in her heart; the next three years would simply formalize the arrangement. So what if jaded back-row assholes snickered at the indignation she whipped up just by raising her hand? She always made her point, and her point was always to change the world.

Harvard Law School uses B as a default grade; a student must perform spectacularly to get an A, or spectacularly badly to get a C. Andrea got mostly A's her first year, and that's even after she raised money for abortion-rights action programs and labored for the Women's Law Association. While her classmates drifted to lucrative summer party jobs in June, Andrea accepted six dollars an hour from outgoing professor Clare Dalton to research midwifery. Andrea found midwifery interesting, but Dalton had just been ousted by a faction of the HLS faculty, and Andrea found that unjust.

Second year, more A's, more good works. Andrea made her mark at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau doing poverty law, and she found herself fighting--in her spare time--for various young mothers, an older mentally disturbed woman with housing problems, and three children involved in a messy divorce. Still, she took a big-dollar, big-firm job during her second summer because she needed the money, and it was only fair to check out that side of the law. But the partners were on to her; they could tell that Andrea's heart wasn't in helping corporations. They didn't extend her an offer, a failure unheard of for a second-year from Harvard. Andrea told them they were right about her, then made herself a perfect third-year at HLS by advocating for the downtrodden. She greeted June 7, 1990--graduation day--as the first day of the rest of a life well led.

Chris Crain

ONE OPINION EXISTS at Harvard Law School, and that is the liberal opinion. Others are hissed until they turn silent. No member of the Class of '90 suffered the hiss more than Chris. First week at school, he used girl instead of woman and was hissed. In class, he said that homosexuals could become heterosexual. Big hiss. Harvard shouldn't subsidize do-gooding students, the death penalty deters, prisons aren't too harsh. Hiss, hiss, hiss. Famed crim-law professor Charles Ogletree took to calling Chris "Crime-Control Crain," because here was the only guy who had the stones to wax conservative. Many men branded Chris a fascist; many women thought him a sexist pig. If anyone was perfectly suited for big-firm life, Chris decided, it was him. The money, prestige, challenging work, contact with movers and shakers--could life be better? He split his first summer between blue-blood firms in Atlanta and Nashville, got full-time employment offers from each.

Set for life, Chris returned to Harvard Law School and availed himself of the school's myriad extracurricular activities. None rewarded him so much as editing the Harvard Law Record, where he was delighted to find that his newspaper instincts hadn't atrophied. He made the Record so fresh, so provocative, that it won the American Bar Association award for best law-school newspaper. Chris's editorial--a plea to the HLS student body to be more civil in conversation--won top honors, too. The secret of the paper's success? All I'm doing, he'd tell people, is re-creating the best job I've ever had, editor of the college newspaper. By graduation, Chris had agreed to a yearlong clerkship for an ultraconservative Atlanta judge, then planned to join Covington & Burling, an old-line D. C. law firm. He still wrestled with concerns about doing the work of a real lawyer, and he still wasn't right with God. But he was a Harvard Law School graduate, and things always were supposed to work out for them.

Greg Giraldo

MR. AND MRS. GIRALDO delivered Greg to Cambridge full of hopes and dreams, but without the right clothes. Harvard Law School was throwing a get-acquainted cocktail party the first night, and the Queens kid had never had occasion to dress for splendor. Greg scoured the town for what he assumed to be the staple of high-fashion evening wear--the blue blazer. That he purchased one with zippers was not to embarrass him for a full four hours, since the party didn't start until eight.

The law-school social scene never stopped being bizarre to him. HLS would plan boat rides or nickel-beer Thursdays or L. A. Law Night at the pub, events that were supposed to break the ice but that, to Greg, just sucked indescribably--"in the deepest way," he'd tell buddies back home. Everyone was so used to being perfect, so sheltered, that they hadn't a clue about the real world, it seemed.

The legal minutiae Greg expected to be de rigueur at Harvard Law School never materialized. Professors concerned themselves instead with sweeping issues of grand importance, about the role of society and the responsibility of citizens, and it thrilled Greg. Never the "gunner" type to shoot his hand up in class, he lived in the back rows during the first weeks of school, marveling at his classmates' intellectual might. There were no chinks in the armor here. A student might sit for six weeks without uttering a peep, praying to be ignored. Then the professor would pick that student's name at random from the seating chart, whereupon that student would launch into a multilayered explanation of the difference between Kant's and Spinoza's conceptions of free will. Greg had long ago mastered the art of skating through school on brainpower alone. But this wasn't school. Here, among titans, he decided to commit 100 percent to his studies. Any less and he'd drown.

Greg pulled a B-plus average the first year, then landed a sweet summer gig with a small Manhattan litigation firm. The little work he was assigned worried him, though. The law wasn't majestic in these offices the way it was at Harvard Law School. Cases seemed petty, one corporation trying to fuck another corporation. Greg chalked up his reaction to immaturity. He'd never had to buckle down--things had always come easy. Snap out of it and grow up, he'd tell himself. It's time to become an adult. Not everything needs to be fun.

Greg pep-talked himself back to Harvard Law School. Just grow up and you'll want to be an attorney, he repeated as if it were a mantra, but his soul wasn't buying it. He remembered the weariness on the faces of the lawyers who took him to lunch to recruit him.

Back in Cambridge, Greg bought prepackaged outlines to cram for finals in classes he wasn't bothering to attend. Money became a primary motivator. The firms paid a shitload of money, and he intended to keep the promise he'd made to his parents when he was seven--a restaurant for his father, shiny dresses for his mother.

Second summer--another fancy Manhattan firm. His duties: Attend Mets games, eat four-star lunches, collect $1,750 weekly paychecks. As in the previous summer, his few real assignments struck him as meaningless. Every day, Greg toyed with the idea of dropping out. Every time, his conclusion was the same: Grow the hell up. Become an adult. You'll love this stuff.

Standing in line to register for third-year classes, Greg found a buddy and compared summer notes. Listen to this, Greg said. A recruiter tried to sell me on his firm. You know what he uses as his closer, the thing to seal the deal? He tells me, "We really encourage associates to have a life here. I'm taking a tax class at NYU and I can leave work at 7:30 p.m. two days a week, and no one says boo!" Greg and his buddy traded jokes about the kind of guy who says, "no one says boo," but neither of them was laughing much inside. Third year was a cakewalk, then Greg took a job even most Harvard students couldn't get, with Manhattan's Skadden Arps, one of the most prestigious, highest-paying law firms in the world. I'm going to grow up there, Greg told himself. I'm going to give it everything I've got.

LAST YEAR, a Harvard Law graduate and Notre Dame law professor named Patrick Schiltz published an article in the Vanderbilt Law Review on overwork, depression, suicide, mental illness, and general misery in the law. In it, he cited a recent survey of the 125 largest firms in the country that found that one third of the partners in these firms, lawyers at the very top of their profession, would choose a different career if they had it to do again.

But life at work used to be simpler--give me fifty years of your life, I'll give you a gold watch. Employers and employees never discussed "soul-searching" or "spiritual crisis"; the words would have been gibberish to them. "Have a good weekend, Phil." "Thanks, Jerry." That was the language of American work. No whining.

And Harvard doesn't earn its reputation by turning out only sensitive types. The place also breeds the legal assassin, the guy born to the law, the guy who will die in the law. He doesn't understand all this crying:

"Harvard Law students are whiners. They're removed from reality. They thought the Harvard Law crown would stay on their heads forever, then they get into the soup and their problems don't go away, and it hurts.

"Law is a brutal business. A lot of it is a devil's bargain. But I love it; I love my job. This whole crisis-of-the-soul thing should be addressed before law school. I spent three years in Nepal, I spoke Nepalese, and I explored my soul so much that when I got to Harvard Law School, I couldn't wait to practice law. Explore your soul before you go to school and you won't wonder so much."

--peter gilhuly, class of 1990, partner in transactional bankruptcy at latham & watkins, los angeles

"I loved my time at Wachtell. I worked among some of the smartest people in the world doing some of the best work. It was an intellectual feast. Working for David Stern was similar, because he has the same kind of standards, and those standards make legal work beautiful. It never crushed my soul to work to such a high standard, to strive for perfection. In ways, I miss it every day."

--george postolos, class of 1990, chief operating officer, houston rockets; former attorney for wachtell, lipton, new york

"I know you're supposed to hate working in a law firm. I'm sorry, I don't hate it. Law is not an easy career, but it can be tremendously satisfying, and it satisfies me. I hear classmates complaining, but it's not just law that's doing this to people. There are enormous demands across the workplace. Where do people think they're going find ideal jobs? Look at teachers. They'll tell you what I'm telling you. Work is hard these days."

--george marek, class of 1990, partner in environmental law, quarles & brady, milwaukee

"Law-firm practice is a phenomenal opportunity. But you have to take the initiative, like with most things in life. I work extremely hard. I'm a lawyer; it's a labor- intensive business. I wish it took less time, but that's not the way the world works.

"I don't know what 'soul-crushing' means. I've never viewed my work that way. The client has a deadline and I get mov-ing. I love it."

--lance t. brasher, class of 1990, partner in project finance, skadden arps, washington, d. c.

Victor Bernace

Something's wrong.

At first, Victor says, the big-firm interviewers loved him, laughed at his jokes, nodded when he compared Harvard Law School to ancient Greece. Many had attended NYU as undergrads and were happy to be with one of their kind. But during each interview, they would ask him, Don't you love this trendy café in the Village, or that chic French restaurant in SoHo? This, Victor thought, was the critical "one of us" question, the only thing a firm really wonders about a Harvard grad: Can we hang with this guy?

Every HLS class, it seems, has the few oddballs who do the impossible and convince interviewers to run like hell. In the class of 1990, it was the Orthodox Jewish woman who, as per her religion, wore wigs and wouldn't shake a man's hand, the hippie with the butt-length ponytail, and Victor; the big firms judged them to be social retards. These firms look past many flaws, but they don't abide retards.

And it's impossible to say exactly what does it. Maybe Victor should have pretended he'd been to those fancy restaurants. Instead, he told his interviewers that he'd grown up on welfare and had never had the money to go anywhere nice. Hmmm. Partners don't want associates talking like that around clients. Then the interviewer would review Victor's summer law experience--all random, quixotic even--and see that it didn't really indicate a man on the move, no rainmaker here. And the interviewer's face would change. Soon, he would ask to see Victor's Law School Admissions Test score, big-firm code for "No, thanks."

Victor turned numb after interviews. Law spoke to him, even if its fanciest representatives had abandoned him. After graduation, he straightened his tie, neatened his résumé, then set out to apply for paralegal jobs, legal-secretary jobs, any job that would place him near the law. Prospective employers delighted in Victor's comportment; the job was his until their fingers traced down to the part of his résumé that said Harvard Law School, 1990. Then they asked Victor, Are you kidding? Is this a joke? And Victor couldn't get into law.

Riding the subway in Harlem, Victor spotted a poster--become a teacher. He tore off a slip and followed the map to the Board of Education, where he stood in line with thousands of hopefuls, because he was $70,000 in debt and needed a job. When he learned that the line was four days long, he jumped back on the subway to Kennedy High, his alma mater, where he tracked down a teacher who had put an arm around him once. I want to be a teacher, Victor told him. When the man asked why a Harvard Law School graduate wanted to teach high school, Victor said it was because he'd been rejected. The school hired Victor on the spot.

Kennedy students could be rough and occasionally threw a punch at Victor, but he never backed down, because if you back down, they'll own you. He earned $25,000, plus a small bonus for his advanced degree. When the smart kids asked what a Harvard Law School graduate was doing teaching inner-city high school, Victor just told them that he'd had problems. He stayed on at Kennedy for a second semester, then a second year, then four more years. All the while, he told himself, Wait for your spot, Victor, wait for your spot. Law can still work for you. The Harvard Law degree can still work for you. Wait for your spot.

One day, Victor ran a red light in front of a cop who wasn't interested in explanations. That disturbed Victor's sense of justice, and he circled the calendar day when he'd have the chance to defend himself. In traffic court, Victor noticed that only one or two attorneys defended the dozens of foreign cabdrivers waiting to see the judge, and he could hear the fees these guys were charging--outrageous, because Victor lived among these cabbies and knew that they couldn't afford to pay $150 for such trivial representation. This was Victor's spot.

He took a leave of absence from teaching, then found every taxi base in his community and hung signs promising to represent cabbies for a fair price. Traffic tickets, he knew, was the lowest rung of the legal ladder--gutter law, he called it--but he was coming alive; he sensed that he might start loving being a lawyer the way he imagined he would during that first day in Contracts class ten years before.

Fifty bucks a case, and Victor never rushed a client. Chopped the legs out from under the shysters and made enemies at traffic court. "What the fuck is Harvard Law doing here?" his competition mumbled loudly. "If I had a Harvard Law degree, this shithole is the last place you'd find me." Here's the part you don't understand, Victor would think to himself. I grew up alone. I didn't have a family. Do you see how these drivers look at me? The way they listen to me? The way they thank me? I'm their family. They have no one, and I know that feeling. Next year, Victor will run for City Council, where he can do real good for his family. He'll be the underdog. He's preparing his campaign today, on the subways between traffic tickets, on the subways where he still thinks about his classmates, the ones at the big law firms making all that money, wondering if their successes are so immediate, their satisfactions so tangible, whether their clients cry when they win a case.

Andrea Kramer

Third year was mostly joy for Andrea at Harvard Law School. She was made for electives like Employment Law and Family Law, courses that hinged on fairness and confirmed that she was meant to serve the public good. Only the public good wasn't so keen to serve Andrea. While classmates locked in full-time jobs, various agencies, fellowships, and associations "dinged" Andrea until she was punchy. Just before sleep, Andrea questioned whether she had demonstrated true commitment to public service. She'd taken that job at the law firm last summer; that's not what other civil-rights-minded students had done. She'd studied midwifery first summer, but what's that got to do with civil rights? By graduation, she found herself agreeing to move to Connecticut so her physicist husband could attend his preferred graduate school, and she wondered whether real civil-rights champions moved to Connecticut for this reason.

But Andrea's husband could never earn enough to keep Andrea in her dreams. His salaries--$10,000, $11,000--wouldn't support two kids and a foster child and a wife with do-gooding desires. Andrea took a job teaching legal writing at the University of Bridgeport law school and spent her spare time working for a pro-choice organization.

After her teaching contract expired, Andrea signed on with New Haven's biggest law firm doing commercial litigation for $60,000 a year. Driving home from work, she repeated this to herself: I'm learning skills, I'm making friends. But when it came time to write a hello to Harvard Law School classmates in the fifth-reunion directory, she found herself using the phrase "So much for visions of changing the world . . ." Here she was, needing to support a family and a student husband and drowning in student loans, and the burdens of life, of reality, were killing her dreams. She thought about erasing those words--why bum people out? But she was losing herself, losing ambition, and when you lose ambition you don't have the energy to hide the truth. She mailed in the comment and they printed it, and some who read those words remembered Andrea as naïve and immature, the way Andrea was starting to remember herself.

Postdoctoral work called Andrea's husband back to Boston in 1995. He'd be earning $33,000 a year, still not enough to subsidize a public-interest-law career. This time, she took a job with a premier Boston firm for $100,000 and adjusted her thinking. Lives have different paths, she figured. I can make a difference on a smaller level, through charitable donations, by recruiting people to my synagogue. I can coach my son's soccer team. But no matter what Andrea told herself, she still ached when she saw women on television who made a difference. Those women, she knew, weren't worrying about baking cranberry bread and coaching their sons' soccer teams.

Last year, Andrea burned out at the big Boston firm and quit. A friend told her about a more relaxed place where she could practice litigation three days a week, and she took the job, which she holds today. She still looks in that reunion directory every now and again, sees the positions of power held by so many of her classmates. And she thinks, I was as smart as any of them. I had their promise. And she says, "You know that saying 'Man makes plans and God laughs'?" Then she reminds herself that at least she's on her first marriage and has two fantastic children, and she allows the word rationalization into her thoughts for only a moment before she unloads the groceries and calls the kids in for dinner.

Chris Crain

This had to happen. Chris met a guy at a gym, invited him to dinner. During the meal, the man confided that he was gay. Chris spilled his guts. I'm gay, too. I think I've always been gay. Here are my fantasies, my prayers, my history. He told the man that when he was clerking, he cried in the judge's office because he couldn't keep pretending to be someone else. Chris was twenty-five years old; until that night, he had never breathed a word to anyone about who he really was. He remembers that the man didn't laugh at him. Today, he calls that dinner "a moment."

Now Chris was gay. He worked for the judge and dated the gym man for seven months, then made good on his commitment to Covington & Burling, D. C.'s old-line firm. The Covington partners embraced their new associate, welcomed him without prejudice, then piled his desk high with work. Only now those piles looked different to Chris. Without a raging secret to displace, a secret that had found expression in every A he'd ever pulled and every award he'd ever won, Chris discovered that he no longer cared about the problems of Corporation A or Conglomerate B. Those piles of work were intended for Crime-Control Crain, but he was nowhere to be found. After Chris fell in love with a man named Dale during Thanksgiving break in Memphis, the couple decided to pick a town and move in together. They settled on Atlanta. The short career of Chris Crain, Washington power broker and attorney, was over.

Chris took a position with a prestigious Atlanta law firm while he decided what he really wanted to do. He had admired The Washington Blade, D. C.'s gay newspaper, saw in it the kind of tabloid-type, muckraking sensibility that had thrilled him when he'd edited the high school, Vanderbilt, and Harvard Law School newspapers. Someday, a talented person will build a chain of quality gay newspapers, he thought, one that will push for civil rights and ask the tough questions of America's leadership. This was his thinking when he heard a rumor that the publisher of the Southern Voice, Atlanta's gay newspaper, wanted out.

Chris made the phone calls, but it was Harvard Law School that opened the heavy oak doors of Atlanta's important gay businessmen. The degree made Chris credible to them, and these businessmen, strangers to Chris, wrote him checks until he co-owned the Southern Voice and made himself its editor, copublisher, and editorial writer. He quit law the same day he signed the papers. Circulation jumped, ad rates grew, and within a year Chris owned two more gay papers, one in Houston, the other in New Orleans. His dream was building steam.

Mr. and Mrs. Crain do not accept Chris's lifestyle. They ask only about his two beagles, never about the newspapers or Dale, whom they refuse to meet. Chris's father hates that Chris quit law, can't fathom that someone would waste a Harvard Law degree. Chris says it's embarrassing to admit, but during the times he feels most challenged, he starts wearing his Harvard Law School class ring. "Not so anyone can see me," he says, "but in my office, with the door closed. I look at it, and it makes me feel better."

Greg Giraldo

New suit, new attitude. Greg showed up at Skadden Arps determined to grow up and knock 'em dead. Then they handed him two hundred documents and told him to close a real estate deal. He studied the documents, the fine print, the hereins and the wherefores. Each was uniquely necessary to the deal, and each looked so goddamned identical that he wondered if God was playing a cruel joke on him. He was earning $87,000 a year as a glorified clerk. No one at Harvard Law School during those discussions on the nature of man and society had bothered to mention that you needed to be a clerk to do this job.

Greg brought his improved attitude to closings but always managed to forget or misplace critical documents. One partner--he'll never forget the look she gave him--asked, "What are you thinking? Who are you?" He left that closing crushed, defeated in a way he'd never known. This work was doable, yet he couldn't get himself to care about monolithic companies trying to fuck each other for another dollar a square foot. His dreams to get rich and provide for his parents, to make them proud, were going to shit. The only decent thing in his life, he thought, was the comedy writing he'd been scribbling in notebooks--fanciful, escapist stuff he thought might work on Saturday Night Live or even onstage. But Skadden Arps didn't pay for nonsense like that.

Snowed under a mountain of documents one evening at work, Greg reached into his bottom desk drawer and found that notebook of jokes. This is insane, he thought, paging through Back Stage for the listing of clubs that sponsored open-mike nights. Later that night, and nights after, people laughed at material he'd written, which Greg figured to be about the greatest feeling in the world. He became acquainted with an important moment, the moment that happens when you're doing what you're meant to be doing. Not long after, he quit the law. Once people laugh at your jokes, he thought, there's no doing law.

Greg moved back into his parents' home and took odd jobs to support his comedy. He helped a director move offices once, even agreed to polish the guy's trophies. Sitting on the ground with a pail of borax and a bunch of rags, Greg thought to himself, I graduated from Harvard Law School. What am I doing with a pail of borax? Then he thought about those piles of legal documents, and he made those trophies shine.

A comedian like Ray Romano or Jerry Seinfeld works ten, fifteen years before he gets a shot at a sitcom, and then only if he's lucky. Greg had been doing stand-up for three years when ABC offered him a prime-time show. The program, Common Law, would star Greg as a hippie-ish Harvard lawyer who, despite being trapped in a major law firm, needed to be true to himself. The network promoted the hell out of the show, plastered Greg's mug on every McDonald's place mat in the country. Greg is correct when he says that the show sucked. The acting, the writing, Greg's hair--it all sucked. ABC canceled Common Law after four episodes.

Saturday night, just after the millennium, Manhattan's sold-out Comedy Cellar. Greg Giraldo is featured this evening. "Direct from his own ABC sitcom, Politically Incorrect, and NBC's Later show, please put your hands together for Greg Giraldo!" Lots of applause, then Greg launches into his gay-bodybuilder routine. Later, near the end of his set, he ponders why courts recently awarded a man millions of dollars for scalding his genitals in a defective shower. "That's a hell of a way to test the water," he says, thrusting his pelvis into an imaginary stream of boiling shower water. The crowd eats it up and stands to cheer for Greg, who will be playing Milwaukee next week, if you happen to be there.

Robert Kurson

Shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School, I joined a major Chicago law firm. Like many of my classmates, I didn't want to be there. Like many of my classmates, children of single-career fathers who never whimpered about happiness, I figured I'd tough it out.

At least the firm took us to baseball games, and early on I was invited to join some partners in the firm's Comiskey Park luxury box. The Sox were playing the Indians, Greg Hibbard versus Tom Candiotti. Comiskey Park luxury boxes feature two rows of movie-theater-style seats and a roomy lounge area. Talk during the early innings that evening was of Corporation A and Conglomerate B. No one sat in the seats to watch the game. Early in the game, a White Sox hitter fouled off a Candiotti knuckleball, and damn if it wasn't whistling our way. The ball flew into our box and lodged under the first row of seats.

My breeding kicked in. I lunged under the seats, scrambling and flailing until I snagged the ball. I jumped up and raised the ball triumphantly, as a baseball fan does instinctively. My white shirt was blotched black with grease, my tie a horror. All I could see was that none of the lawyers had made a move for the ball, and none were approaching to slap me a high-five. Taking my seat, I wondered if I hadn't hurt myself politically at the firm, just weeks into the rest of my life. As I fingered the baseball, clutched it, really, a different thought came to me: What happened to the days when I had the world by the balls? What happened to the days when I was golden? A couple months later, I quit the law.