What do corporate lawyers have in common with the crew of Battlestar Galactica? (Credit to thegreatgeekmanual for the poster!)

I am working my way through the remake of Battlestar Galactica on the recommendation of a friend. I loved the original when I was younger and I suspected that the new version would be disappointing, but so far I am really enjoying it.

The first episode of the first main season is called "33". There is a full plot synopsis on Wikipedia but the essential point is that whenever Galactica jumps to a new location, the evil Cylons catch up with them precisely 33 minutes later.

This prevents the crew from sleeping and, after five days and 237 jumps, their real battle is to avoid making a fatal miscalculation as sleep deprivation strikes (for anyone who has never watched, the Cylons are machines and don't have this problem).

Anyone who has worked as a corporate lawyer at a large firm will find that watching "33" brings back unpleasant memories. It seems to be almost an unwritten law that completing large deals requires late night finishes (or more likely early hours of the morning) in the run-up to completion with a couple of all-nighters thrown in for good measure.

The struggles of the Galactica's crew to remain awake and functioning seem pretty realistic from my own experience and I scanned the closing credits carefully to see if any magic circle corporate lawyers were involved as consultants!

I have always thought that having sleep deprived lawyers working on your transaction as it reaches completion is a raw deal from the client's point of view. The final outstanding points are negotiated and rigorous attention to detail and project management are essential… and you are going to do it when you have been awake for 36 hours straight?!

The science of sleep deprivation is very complex, but there is no page of Wikipedia which I won't skim read in pursuit of illumination, and it is obvious that the effects of sleep deprivation on the cognitive process are profound. The 2004 study cited in the article which found that "medical residents with less than four hours of sleep a night made more than twice as many errors as residents who slept for more than seven hours a night" is fairly representative. It isn't a great leap from this to suggest that a lawyer's performance would be reduced in the same way.

The studies which suggest that lack of sleep makes you obese are also worrying for corporate lawyers (although this seems to be less clear cut – especially as living on vente lattes, chocolate bars from the vending machine and pizza deliveries during the course of a deal will have a similar effect anyway).

The serious point is that carrying out client work in this state creates a liability risk for the lawyer and their firm and means that the client is unlikely to be getting the best out of their lawyer.

There are transactions where deadlines make the late nights essential, but in most cases the problem could be avoided by resourcing work properly and project managing it effectively.

Maybe corporate lawyers need to collectively grow up and realise that pulling an all-nighter isn't a badge of honour or (usually) a necessary evil, but rather an indication that something has gone wrong.

It shows that someone, somewhere, has managed the transaction badly. In that situation it makes sense to consider who, and why, and whether there is something we can do differently next time to avoid a similar problem.

There may not be Cylons waiting in the wings, but the consequences of making forced errors as a result of sleep deprivation could still be painful for those involved.