Why I Pulled an All-Nighter This Week (Again)

Last reviewed October 2, 2026

I pulled an all-nighter this week. Again. Not because I planned badly, and not because I took on more than I can handle — because that is what this corner of the law does, and I would rather explain it than pretend it does not happen.

The deadline is the case

Student matters run on the school’s calendar, under the school’s rules. Response windows and appeal deadlines are commonly measured in business days — frequently three to ten — and the clock usually runs from the date on the letter, not the day you read it, and not the day you decided to take it seriously. Extensions are rare, and asking for one costs time you may not have.

Courts give you months. Schools give you a week. That single fact shapes everything about how a student-defense practice has to work.

What an all-nighter actually looks like

It is not drama. It is arithmetic. A window opens; the complete file arrives partway through it; and the response has to be built on the record — which means the record has to actually be read. All of it. The handbook, the emails, the evaluations, the timeline. When the window is five business days and the file is complete on day two, the reading and the writing happen at night.

It helps that I like the night shift. I have a house full of kids, and the hours after midnight are the quietest desk I own. Some of my best work happens when the house is asleep and there is nothing left in the day but the file.

You will notice there are no details here about whose deadline it was, which school, or what kind of matter. There never will be. Student matters are confidential, and if you want to know how an office treats confidences, watch what it posts.

What you should take from this

If a letter with a deadline is sitting in your inbox right now, the calendar is the first fact of your case — before the merits, before the unfairness, before anything. Every day spent deciding whether the letter is serious is a day taken from the response. Find the deadline, find which document the clock runs from, and act on that basis.

And when you write to a lawyer — me or anyone else — put the dates in the first line. The school, the decision, the deadline. Everything else can follow, but the dates decide how the work gets sequenced, and whether someone is up at 2 a.m. reading your handbook.

Why the practice is built for this

One lawyer reads everything — that is the design of this office, not an accident. And it comes with the other side of the coin: I am the lawyer, and there is no one else to disburse the blame to. No associate who “had the file,” no committee that is “still reviewing,” no department to point at. If a deadline lands on this office, it lands on me — which is exactly why the calendar sometimes lands on me at night instead of on a queue. Ben handles the follow-up so nothing you send sits unanswered while a clock runs. And because almost everything here is a flat fee set in writing first, a late night is my problem, not a line on your bill.

On a deadline right now? Email zachary@astudentslawyer.com with the school, the decision, and the dates — and say the deadline out loud in the first sentence. Or start with the Full Read + Game Plan: I aim to finish by the end of the week your complete file arrives, because that is what the windows demand.