There Are Rules. No. 1: Never Cry.

● Nancy Lieberman, lawyer: It always happened on a Friday afternoon. You’d be working on a merger, doing research, writing memos—and then all of a sudden it would get the green light. The partner would say, “I need to see something by Sunday.” This is like a Friday at five o’clock. They would say, “Make it a hell-orhigh-water agreement,” which meant that the deal had to happen virtually no matter what.

I got asked to work on Allied Chemical and Signal Company—a $12 billion deal, the largest non-oil-company merger ever done. I was 28. I did USX Corp, when Carl Icahn tried a takeover; when Rite Aid bought Hook Drug; Santa Fe–Southern Pacific.

We would take over a conference room; that became the war room. No ventilation, no open windows. You had to mark up the entire agreement by hand. Everything was under a code name— you lived in fear of the deal leaking. Sometimes you felt like you’d only been there for an hour and then you’d look at your watch and it’d be 3 a.m. You could order dinner from any place you wanted, but sometimes you were so hyped you weren’t hungry.

I knew rule No. 1: You can’t cry. As a woman, you never cry. I would cry in the bathroom sometimes. But there was sometimes yelling in the war rooms. Once, we were marking up a hostile tender offer, and this associate started yelling, “It’s my father’s 50th birthday, and I’m stuck here with you.” I looked at him and yelled back, “Well, today is my grandmother’s 85th.”

I used to leave something I could wear to a club or party in my office so I could go out for a couple of hours with my friends. Then I’d come back at one in the morning and finish up. When I made partner, they had a full bathroom right across from my office with a bathtub and a shower. I spent more time there than I did in my apartment.

At the end of an all-nighter, it smelled like a gym. Crumpled Xerox paper on the floor, coffee cups, Chinese-food containers. It was the worst. Then you’d see the story in the newspaper. And that was fun.