But it doesn’t mean the idea is without merit.

Margaret Heffernan, CEO of five different businesses, has argued for something most lawyers will have wished for at some point in their career – probably in a sweaty, gloomy room at some ungodly hour of the night surrounded by lever-arch files and empty pizza boxes – sensible working hours.

First grain of truth, the Gordon Gekko complex:

bnet.com: …financial services, consulting, the law and even the medical profession perpetuate working hours where all-nighters are heroic, driving with jet lag is the norm and anyone who actually has lunch risks becoming lunch.

Breeds a Gordon the Goffer reality:

…for the last 100 years, every productivity study in every industry has come to the same conclusion: after about 40 hours in a week, the quality of your work starts to degrade. You make mistakes. That’s why working 60 hours may not save you time or money: you’ll spend too much of that time fixing the mistakes you shouldn’t have made in the meantime.

What should we be doing instead – nurturing our assets:

In a knowledge economy, where thinking and creativity are the raw materials from which products and profit flow, brains are assets. They need to be cherished, nurtured and protected, not abused. Leaders need to take seriously a century’s evidence that 1) overwork doesn’t make us productive, it makes us stupid, 2) looking away from a problem is often the best way to solve it, and 3) burnout is what happens when people are asked to work in ways that obliterate all other parts of their lives.

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And improving our productivity.

Attractive logic – bets on partners being seduced…