Here are the stories of former Lehman Brothers employees

Then she was shaken by the failure of another investment bank, Bear Stearns. "There are so many risk and credit controls in these institutions," said Roitman, now 50 years old. "Unless someone does something wrong, how does it go?"

The loss of the company cost her about $ 1 million in savings, she said.

She remembers thinking, "Now I have to start all over again." Suddenly she was afraid to pay for her education and to retire. She had put her parents with a Lehman fund manager, and they also took a hit. She was not sure of the future and wondered: "If I could lose this job, what could I lose from it?"

As a result of the bankruptcy, she remained to complete the transactions of her clients. Since then, she has worked as a lawyer in a handful of small financial companies, where she says she earns half of what she did at Lehman. "I never recovered," she said.

Still, the financial loss, she said, was not the hardest.

"What I lost was my identity," she said. "Our business was over."