Restatement 1st of Summer Associates
It's been done before. But I figure the complete meltdown of the legal market warrants a new look into the topic of how/what to do as a summer associate. These are just my off-the-cuff thoughts and not authoritative for any firm for reasons that should be obvious.
1. Produce the best possible work-product that you can. I think the era of letting summer associates with sub-par work-product slide into an offer is over. What should you do? Think, organize, and proofread about a million times. And when you are done, do it again.
2. Don't waste the client's/firm's resources. Sure everyone is inefficient when it comes to billing when they first start. But the chances that your work will actually be billed to the client is slightly higher (although there are also competing reasons why your work may not be billed, e.g., showing the client good will by writing off the time billed by a summer on a time-consuming research project). More importantly, your Lexis/Westlaw usage is not written off. Someone has to pay for it. Be weary of such phrases as "free" and "already paid for" coming from the mouths of the respective account reps. Again, someone always pays for it. I suggest learning and using cost-efficient research methods.
3. When in doubt, ask. This applies to your entire career path. Nearly all disasters in this profession occur because someone assumed. [Insert token Under Siege 2: Dark Territory quote].
4. From the thread I linked above, famed Boaltess Stacita remarked: "don't blow your offer by blowing anything else." Again, self-explanatory. Your character and reputation are far too valuable. Don't let booze bring you down. On the other hand, if your character shows its true colors after a few drinks, by all means, indulge. I'd rather know who to avoid ahead of time.
5. Judging by ATL threads, most firms are cutting back on summer spending. Do not go into your summer associateship with any sense of entitlement. The positive of this rule is to take advantage of the events that your firm puts on.
6. Treat every staff member like you'd treat a corner office partner. This rule again applies throughout your career. The reasons are easy enough: a) staffers have their ears close to the ground, avoid being a story b) they will save your butt when you have a pressing deadline and 1,000 pages to duplicate for that filing. Anecdotally, something as simple as a cup of coffee for a staffer who did a great job of preparing something for me got tremendous mileage.
These are the big ones in my mind. Feel free to add your own.
1. Produce the best possible work-product that you can. I think the era of letting summer associates with sub-par work-product slide into an offer is over. What should you do? Think, organize, and proofread about a million times. And when you are done, do it again.
2. Don't waste the client's/firm's resources. Sure everyone is inefficient when it comes to billing when they first start. But the chances that your work will actually be billed to the client is slightly higher (although there are also competing reasons why your work may not be billed, e.g., showing the client good will by writing off the time billed by a summer on a time-consuming research project). More importantly, your Lexis/Westlaw usage is not written off. Someone has to pay for it. Be weary of such phrases as "free" and "already paid for" coming from the mouths of the respective account reps. Again, someone always pays for it. I suggest learning and using cost-efficient research methods.
3. When in doubt, ask. This applies to your entire career path. Nearly all disasters in this profession occur because someone assumed. [Insert token Under Siege 2: Dark Territory quote].
4. From the thread I linked above, famed Boaltess Stacita remarked: "don't blow your offer by blowing anything else." Again, self-explanatory. Your character and reputation are far too valuable. Don't let booze bring you down. On the other hand, if your character shows its true colors after a few drinks, by all means, indulge. I'd rather know who to avoid ahead of time.
5. Judging by ATL threads, most firms are cutting back on summer spending. Do not go into your summer associateship with any sense of entitlement. The positive of this rule is to take advantage of the events that your firm puts on.
6. Treat every staff member like you'd treat a corner office partner. This rule again applies throughout your career. The reasons are easy enough: a) staffers have their ears close to the ground, avoid being a story b) they will save your butt when you have a pressing deadline and 1,000 pages to duplicate for that filing. Anecdotally, something as simple as a cup of coffee for a staffer who did a great job of preparing something for me got tremendous mileage.
These are the big ones in my mind. Feel free to add your own.
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 8:53 PM
19 Comments:
Be nice to your fellow summers. Partners and associates often will ask the other summers what they think of you.
Two pieces of advice... one is fake and one is real:
1) As the summer progresses, use the billing software to generate reports on the hours that other summers have billed. Run a statistical analysis and make sure you are 2 standard deviations above the mean.
2) Miss the summer retreat because you were working really hard on an urgent matter and couldn't find a way to get both done.
#1 is much more important than #2. #2 is just gravy.
in normal years, three of the most frequent causes of no-offers are blown deadlines, projecting a sense of entitlement, and not being a team player.
as for the first, know your deadlines, break the project into subparts, and give yourself internal deadlines on the subparts. if some other work creates a blocking event, think about whether there is a realistic way to get both done. if not, raise the issue sooner rather than later. most firms have a work flow coordinator, but you can also talk to the assigning lawyers and explain the situation. don't just dump the problem on them. have a coherent plan for them about what you can get done with some juggling between the original assignment and the blocking assignment.
on the second issue, sometimes the projection of a sense of entitlement actually comes from the SA's nervousness and concern about being left out of some event, etc. yo have to trust that if you work hard and are a team player, things will work out. sometimes the problem is really a sense of entitlement, although my guess is that given the current economic situation most SAs will avoid that problem.
on the third issue, remember that law school exams have trained you to think that legal work is done by solitary people, while of course the reality is that most of it is done by teams. the old fashioned virtues of team work are highly prized. helping out your fellow SAs, treating all firm employees as team members, never complaining but rather jumping in to fix a bad situation, etc., are not only good in and of themselves--they're also good for your career.
John Steele
I tried to ensure high-quality work by partnering with a summer associate editing buddy. We agreed to proofread each other's drafts to catch those typos you just miss when you've read it over multiple times. This also helped me get to know other summer associates, see what other types of work people were doing, and stay ahead of deadlines. I recommend it.
Picking up the recommendation to be nice to everyone, take your secretary to lunch at least once. Most firms have slashed staff bonuses and staff are not invited to the majority of the summer events. In previous years, I've overhead comments about how much money gets spend on the summers. I'm sure it will be even worse this year.
Also many secretaries have been at the firm for years and can tell you a lot about the partners and senior associates if they feel like it.
To add to John Steele's comment, my firm has no offered in the past for poor work performance. If on your first assignment there are serious concerns about your work product, find out if the firm has a legal writing specialist or someone who can help work with you to improve your work product ASAP. With the shortened summer, you'll have less time to fix any issues that may pop up.
Just be super nice to everyone. Partners, associates, secretaries, paralegals, other summers, the receptionist, the waiter at lunch, etc. Everyone. It's amazing how people will try so hard to suck up to partners and end up being an ass to a secretary and end up with a no offer.
Work product was less important in the past but I agree with others who say it is much more important now.
But really, be your wonderful, smart selves and enjoy the summer and you'll likely be fine.
Typos.
Last summer a partner asked me what I meant when I referred to "trail judges" in my very first memorandum. Not a proud moment for me.
I know it sounds like a lame thing for your firm to judge you upon (you go to Boalt -- you must have so much more to offer than proofreading, right?) but as the comments above show, typos will get you into huge trouble. They ooze sloppiness, which creates inferences about your intellect, your level of commitment, and even your judgment.
If you follow this blog at all, you know that I am borderline-disabled when it comes to spotting typographical errors in my own work (repeated words seem seem to be particularly bedeviling) and I know for me it's not easy, but trust me, it's huge. Have your assistant help you proofread, sit on your memorandums overnight, crank the font up to 24 point and go over the sucker word-by-word . . . whatever you have to do. It's always worth the time.
Oh, and if the whole "be nice to people" thing is news to you, you should probably know ahead of time that you're in real trouble. My guess is your firm first and foremost wants to know that you'll be a good coworker. Pleasantness and basic social norms will carry you farther than cleverness.
I did the same thing as Tom - a fellow summer and I always proofread each other's work before passing it on to anyone at the firm. I would highly recommend it. The only summer who got bad reviews at my firm did so because of some sloppy typos in a project.
I'll second the advice to treat the staff the same as the managing partner. A secretary can make or break you, particularly if she/he has a close relationship with the partner.
Your assistant can be a huge help. Be *very* nice to your assistant. Take your assistant out to lunch toward the beginning of the summer. If you feel awkward, pair up with another summer and his/her assistant--I did this and it was actually a lot of fun.
At lunch, our assistants told us everything about what they do, and it was really helpful. After I took my assistant to lunch, she offered to proofread my assignments before I handed them in. This was a HUGE help to me.
Talk to your assistant early, find out what he/she does at your firm, and be very nice to him/her.
If your firm offers you an associate mentor for the summer, make sure you get to know them. My mentor over the summer helped me immensely. He proofread things, showed me what aspects of the memo/motion were missing, and generally gave great feedback before I handed the assignment in.
Also, the hiring committee will generally talk to the associate paired with you, and the better they know you, the more likely they can say (hopefully) beneficial things.
I think Slam Master's experience is something of an outlier with respect to actually advising on work-product. That strikes me as a bit over-the-line. Otherwise, yes, get to know your mentors.
I have to agree with Slam Master A. As someone who didn't get an offer last summer, I wish I'd leaned on my mentor more. At my summer firm, the mentor was one of 5 people who met to discuss whether to give an offer or not. (The others were the non-lawyer summer coordinator, the attorney in charge of the summer program, the hiring partner and a partner from the summer's preferred practice group.)
He certainly didn't make it easy for me. We were supposed to have our mentor edit our first project and he never did despite numerous emails. ( During our few interactions he also told me that I absolutely would be getting an offer so I shouldn't worry.)
Nonetheless after being assured verbally upon departure that I had an offer by the hiring partner, I was later called and told I didn't have one, because, my first and last projects had too many "mistakes."
I feel like if I had gotten to know my mentor better I'd have had a stronger advocate in that final meeting. Furthermore I might have gotten a better sense of what work was expected. Just because the assigning attorney is happy with your work, does not mean that the hiring committee cannot later go thru it on their own terms and pick it apart.
Thus perhaps my advice is really broader: find out who is making the hiring decisions, and make sure they have a stake in hiring you. Normally you could sit back and not screw up--the offer was yours to lose. But this summer some firms will look for any excuse to no offer and I suspect they may have a hard cap on the number of offers they can give.
Doing good work is important but quietly doing good work will get you nowhere. The people in the hiring committee need to know you well enough that the very thought of not hiring you elicits an image in their mind of you doing your most pathetic puppy dog face. Not being able to resist they'll move on and no offer the person they can't remember.
Wow 2:40, that's a horrible experience. I hope you've steered Boalties away from that firm.
Wow, that's a horrible story 2:40. That's shitty of them to tell you that you have an offer and then not give it later.
Off the point, but what are 3Ls doing with all your old textbooks? I have a bunch that are not the latest editions and thus are unlikely to sell online, and I certainly am not going to haul them across the country to let them gather dust. I feel bad throwing them away, but don't know what else to do with them.
At the end of high school, and again at the end of college, we used all our old papers and books to have a giant bonfire. Just some food for thought.
2:40 here, definitely told CDO about experience. I have no doubt most firms (even in this economy) won't treat people like that.
I have one more bit to add.
Don't take on too many projects at once. As much as you may have to prove yourself a bit more this year, the way to do it is not thru huge numbers of projects but rather thru a few really high quality interactions (and project turn ins) with lawyers.
Five amazing projects will not make up for one moderately flawed one.
Furthermore, I recommend establishing a strong relationship with 2-3 partners, at least one of whom is not part of the firm's hiring process in any substantial way. Some qualified people will not get offers and having PARTNERS to serve as references will be invaluable to getting another job. (Worked for me.)
Also some of you will HATE working at a large law firm. For the love of God, don't put yourself through hell after law school because of the economy or the feeling that you have to go into BigLaw. But do use the experience to get good references for future jobs. I know several people in the class of 2009 who turned down their summer offers--yes in this economy--and I think they made the right decision for them.
I'm surprised at how formal these summer programs sound. My firm summer experience was pretty much boozing and dining interspersed with a few hours of work throughout the summer.
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