That’s what nearly happened at Cleary, Gottlied, Steen & Hamilton, an international law firm with a major office in New York. When the firm helped managed the sale of Lehman Brothers’ assets to Barclays Capital, Inc., an Excel reformatting error nearly put the company in over its head.

According to CGSH lawyers, a second-year associate asked a less-experienced employee to reformat an Excel document containing the Lehman contracts to be assumed by Barclays. When the employee resized the rows and made other alterations, 179 contracts were mistakenly added to the purchase agreement — far more than Barclays wanted to purchase.

The case to have the additional contracts thrown out is still making its way throw New York’s bankruptcy courts, in the wake of Lehman’s recent collapse.