While other law firm partners use their sabbaticals to travel to the farthest corners of the globe, Irell & Manella attorney Howard Steinberg stayed in his Century City, Calif., office — and wrote a 3,750-page bankruptcy book.

“I was spending more time in the office than when I had been working,” said Steinberg, a Los Angeles bankruptcy partner. “It was not the idyllic sabbatical I had imagined.”