Submitted to a Candid World

Most often, you get stories like this from “Above the Law,” David Lat’s self-styled “legal tabloid” that profiles the life & times of lawyers at America’s big law firms (”BigLaw” Lawyers).

Let’s steal some of his thunder.

For those non-law students out there, the tradition among top law firms recruiting from top law schools has been to take students after their 1L year, and/or after their 2L year, hire them as “summer associates,” pay outlandish salaries, wine and dine them, and hope to convince them to accept a position as a junior associate after law school. Viewed by some as practically a birthright, I for one think that these sorts of things are a little much: the idea seems to be that we summer associates ought never experience anything but high-price pleasure, and that’s frankly not what I signed up for, and not why I’m attracted to BigLaw practice. What I’m attracted to, rather, is the chance to learn, and to do meaningful work for important clients on important issues.

After the credit crunch, law firms seem to have been forced to trim their summer programs. But I’m not sure they’re trimming it the right way. Instead of cutting back on high-budget swanky alcohol-soaked events, they seem to be cutting back on social opportunities during the day, meaning, (mostly) gone are the days of high-attendance lunches and free Starbucks cards. This elevates the goal of getting the summer associates drunk over the goal of getting the summer associates to meet lawyers during the day. I’m not sure it’s the right sacrifice to make.

(Postscript: as before, I won’t say on this site what firm I’m working for).