Yep, that’s what I had for a few years - with my initials stitched onto it.
I had one that I used briefly (hah) many years ago. It’s very good quality, in great shape. We’ve been trying to unload it in garage sale after garage sale. We can’t give it away.
mmm
Same here. And the reason that you see me bringing it home at night is because court starts first thing in the morning (usually 8 or 8:30), so I won’t have time to stop at the office in the morning.
(My office is quite old fashioned. I’d like to ditch the paper files for a laptop, but either way a briefcase is useful).
There’s an article in today’s Wall St. Journal about how backpacks are supplanting briefcases and messenger bags among today’s Smart Professional Set.
One of the featured models is this one, selling for a cool $3695. :smack:
I routinely carry a plebeian backpack on vacation trips, but don’t need to have it on my daily commute to/from work.
I use a laptop bag for the same purpose. Sometimes it includes a laptop…sometimes not.
I try to use digital files as much as possible, but in court it is still much easier to show the judge, opposing party, witnesses, etc. a hard paper copy of a document instead of sharing it with them in the cloud.
You should probably it that before it spoils.
I use a rolling laptop bag. It has plenty of room to stash whatever I want to carry and it makes it so easy, with no shoulder pain.
I still have a beautiful leather briefcase I got when I graduated from MBA school (approximately 100 years ago). I did use it sometimes. I should get rid of it but I don’t want to.
I used a canvas Land’s End briefcase when I was in MBA school. You could stuff so many books and papers in that thing. I lost a lot of weight hauling that thing up and down the stairs.
I like nice a modern leather brief case. Mine is slim and fits my laptop, wallet, keys, glasses and phone. I hate carrying anything in my pockets that pulls or breaks the lines of my suit. I avoid using a shoulder strap and a backpack is definitely out.
I have my old brief case from about 40 years ago, nice leather bound with brass fittings and the little combination locks still set to 000. I keep old resumes and business cards in it, a long with a mementos from those old days. I didn’t need to carry it that often, it was mainly a standard accessory to bring to meetings, or a secure place for papers when I was on the road. Briefcases aren’t great for carrying computers, the earliest ‘portables’ wouldn’t fit in a regular briefcase, when they got small enough you still didn’t want them rattling around inside a solid case, and as already mentioned there is far less paper to carry around. I don’t even need the extra pens and pencils I kept in it. I have a soft leather bag that’s big enough for large laptops and the occasional books and paper I’ll need. I had a nice backpack made for carrying laptops, but it wasn’t big enough for the newer large screen models, not sure what happened to that. Occasionally I’ll stuff a a common backpack with everything I need when I travel.
In the late 70s/early 80s, I carried my daily morning newspaper to work to read at lunch & bring back home in mine whilst working at Lockheed Martin Aerospace.
After that, I used my briefcase to bring home pre-production model telephones, after they had gone thru environmental (temperature, humidity, vibration, mechanical drop, & electro-static discharge, & UL) testing whilst employed at GTE Communication Systems in the early to mid 80s. 
So, considering that nearly every response in this thread has referenced laptop bags, shoulder bags and/or backpacks, the OP really boils down to “why has the shape of the bag office workers carry home at the end of the day changed?” Because it’s not any less likely that an office worker will be carrying home a bag of stuff at the end of the day than it was in the 50s, as five minutes spent on the 6pm train any day of the week will probably show you
I do like Horatius’s answer of “because we used to care more about the documents inside being battered around, hence hard sides”, but I’d like to propose another one too - it’s all in the handle.
I, briefly (ha!), had a briefcase as my schoolbag back in high school. And I *loathed *it. It was a horrible solution for carrying stuff around in because you have to use the grip strength in your hands for picking up that itty bitty handle, and I have delicate girly hands that don’t *have *a grip strength. Shoulder bags or backpacks are much less hard to haul stuff around in - and by “stuff” I mean “anything heavier than the bag itself”.
I note that a similar handle changeover has occurred in luggage over the last 30 years too - in this case “pick things up by the handle” has been replaced by “roll it along on wheels”
So I’m going to nominate “women these days are carrying more than we ever did, and we’re demanding carrying solutions that above all minimise how much muscle power you need to exert”
My Dad used to have one of the old leather ones with the combination locks. My friend’s Dad had one of those silver aluminum ones, which even being a kid, I always thought were really cool for some reason. Probably from watching movies with a secret agent or G-Man carrying them around doing secret squirrel stuff.
Like one of these:
In high school in the early 70s I had a US Army gas mask bag I carried books and pens and wallet in. It went with my US army jacket, long hair, and beard. University days, I had a nylon bag with a shoulder strap and a handle. Now have a leather bag like the Gurkha above, but never use the shoulder strap because it crushes the shoulders of my suits. And I use it to swat people who don’t take their backpacks off in queues and busses.