Summer Associate of the Day: ‘Skadden Cristal Boy’
If you’re a summer associate at a large law firm, wondering how to conduct yourself over the next few weeks, you can consult various “survival guides” (assuming you need instruction on how to “survive” lunches at four-star restaurants). See, e.g., here and here.
But at the end of the day, being a good summer associate is just about demonstrating good judgment. Or at least not horrendous judgment. Heck, even Aquagirl got an offer.
Of course, showing good judgment may be easier said than done. Via the deliciously dishy Skadden Insider blog:
Last week a certain New York Office summer associate decided it was appropriate to expense his bar tab from a post-welcome party night out with a few fellow soon-to-be-3Ls. We’re sure the boys had a blast, given that the bar bill included several bottles of Cristal. The fearless leader of the group — you know, the one who actually had the balls to submit the multi-hundred dollar bill for reimbursement — got a bit of a lecture about judgment and appropriate expenses.The biggest mistake the boys made, we hear, is that they failed to bring any lawyers with them. Dumb. Always insulate yourselves with an associate or two (or if the bar bill is $900, 20 lawyers) and never, never, never put your credit card down.
Congratulations to “Skadden Cristal Boy.” You are ATL’s Summer Associate of the Day!!!
Update: This post is subject to some corrections. Please click here.
We expect this is just the first of many SA screw-ups over summer 2007. Pursuant to our previous request, please send us your funny, interesting, or embarrassing summer associate stories, by email. Thanks.
Another bottle of Cristal, please [Skadden Insider]
Summer is here: A survival guide [Skadden Insider]
Summer Camp: Eat, drink and be merry [Daily Business Review]
(34) Comments
Comments
Skadden=Models and Bottles!
Jonas Blank with bubbles... so what?
Everyone's going to act as if the guy's now in huge trouble, he'll make the appropriate apology for appearances' sake, and then he'll get an offer at the end of the summer just like everyone else, and in the fall of 2008 he'll be presented with a fat paycheck, a Blackberry, and directions to a warehouse full of documents.
these kind of people should be fired. period.
Funny, I don't remember my firm having a problem with us ordering cristal when I was a summer associate. Was the problem that he didn't have any associates with him so that it could constitute a "recruiting expense?"
these ivy league punks and their sense of entitlement make me sick.
Cristal is so cliche. Order a bottle of '95 Krug or '66 Bollinger. Have some class, for god's sake.
Cristal, how cliche. If you were really a sophisticated "baller" if you will, you would have found some ladies, and gone with the Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.
You peasants bore me.
Gallion out!!
And Chateau Lafite-Rothschild is not cliche?
Also, it is not champagne. HTH
I think if I turned that in, my firm may actually take it out of my next paycheck, and I don't personally feel we're cheap at all.
Although, give the kid some credit for having the balls to expense that, there's no way I would have done it. Does anyone know if they actually paid for it?
I know I've gotten jaded in this profession when I see stories like this and think, "Eh, that's not that bad." Lat's right; if the guy had only thought to invite an associate or two, it would have been business as usual.
Cristal? Isn't that hooker champagne?
I bet Skadden would have paid for Dom or, fuck, even Veuve Clicquot. They just didn't want to sully their name by paying for *Cristal*.
I know a true story of a summer assocaite at an Atlanta firm who lost his shirt to some assocaites and partner sin a poker game . . . and the firm expensed the whole debt (several hundred dollars).
My feeling is, if a summer would do that to a firm, then just think what he might do to a client as a full-fledged lawyer? Spending fast and loose with other people's money is not a good trait in a lawyer. What's disappointing is in all the talk about firm's questioning people's judgment and the possibility of being fired on this board, people rarely consider that this is, at root, an ethical consideration, which, as I seem to recall from some class or other I took, is kinda important to being a lawyer.
Oh get off your high horse. If I thought I could buy Cristal on a regular basis and my firm would pay for it then I would. And the way I've been billing lately, they probably would.
They've taken my soul, I will squeeze every dime out of them I can. So stick that in your PR book bull ...
Me personally to 250!!!
1:10, give me a break. I would feel bad spending my kid sister's money, because she's a struggling college grad who works temp jobs to get by and she's grateful if I buy her dinner. I don't feel bad spending my firm's money, because they put me on an electronic leash and EXPECT me to cancel dinner plans and trips I've scheduled weeks in advance, just to finish draft 17 of some random-ass agreement the client HAS to have by the morning. All while the partners go home to their mansions with their wives and kids at 5:30 p.m.
This is not an ethical issue, except to the extent that, ethically speaking, my firm OWES me. The least they can do is the occasional bottle or seven of champagne.
It's Friday afternoon and you should all STFU and get back to work.
I wonder which outside counsel I'll call later this afternoon with some pressing research I need done for Monday morning...
That reminds me of the summer at Bangle, Bangle & Bangle who once put a 22 of Steele Reserve on the firm's tab at 7-11. As you might imagine, B cubed was not happy! SNAPPPPPP!
So, exactly at what point does one stop being entitled to the firm's money, hm? By the arguments I'm seeing, it's as much as you can get away with. I suppose if you feel the client OWES you for the work you've done and you feel that you have not been adequately compensated, you should just maybe dip into their client account to salve your wounds? Well, no, of course, because the agreement with the client says the firm gets x amount of money for y amount of work, much like you have signed your life away for x amount of salary and bonuses for y amount of billable hours. Feel free to pump your hours as much as you can for bonuses, and to bill as much comped stuff as you can--but it has to be within the bounds that have been set. It has to be justifiable, just as you can bill the hell out of a file if the work is warranted. Billing personal, un-firm-related expenses to the firm is just misappropriation of funds.
Is it true that if you don't use it, you lose it?
Those Bangels canNOT take a joke, y'all.
2:36: were you that summer?!
no 1:10. In a big law firm, you have no access to client fund accounts. Secondly, it's not that we pad the bills to steal from the clients. We bill appropriately (well, most of us); we just feel that while we're slaving away so the partners can urinate on beluga caviar and them make me draft another merger agreement to pay for it, maybe, just maybe a few nice dinners on them wouldn't be out of line.
The partner I work for doesn't even let me go to lunch. And no, I don't order in either, so no, I don't feel bad about re-appropriating a little of the firms assets to my love of fine dining and expensive alcohol. I'm not stealing from a client, i'm stealing from a partner.
Get it straight.
Ps. I would like to thank 1:53 for paying me to write this message.
Pps. Penny, can you have the valet bring my Porsche around the front please. Thank you, dear.
summer associates are owed NOTHING. They are naive, immature and arrogant kids who, in essence, get paid what I do (or, in the case of Reed Smith, more) for going on vacay. They should stay after 4:30pm and see what firm life is really going to be like.
You people need to relax. I am not a current summer, but as with most associates reading, I once was. So what if the summer experience is completely unrelated to what their real associate life will be like if and when they come back to join the firm. It's no big secret. Let them - and the associates who have the time to join them - enjoy in their fun. A last summer of joy before the dreariness of bar study and full-time associate life turns these kids into the same bitter, overworked folks commenting above.
Cristal is cliché? I feel sorry for the poors folks at Louis Roederer for having created a prestige cuvée that became so popular it fell out of favor with law blog commentators. But -- now that Jay-Z boycotted it, is it back in fashion?
I've lost track of the number of summer events I've attended or heard of where people were guzzling JW Blue by the bottle. Lat, as usual, is right. Make sure it goes on a partner's open AmEx and you're fine. Put it on your own, and you're screwed. It's not that complicated.
Incidentally, congratulations David, on becoming the Best Week Ever of law. New York Lawyer is crediting this blog for breaking the "french fry short of a happy meal" story. I wish I could shake your hand.
I cannot tell a lie, I was not that summer. But once I played Edward Fortyhands with Steel Reserve. Not as good as Country Club XXX, though.
who was the summer associate? WE WANT NAMES! Or at least a picture.
1:10, don't be an idiot. It's not like the firm gives us credit cards. If they want to deny our expense reports, they can do it. That doesn't make it "unethical" for us to ask for a little money, any more than it's unethical for any person to ask for a raise or an increase in benefits.
Awesome, although us legal assistants have been ordering cristal when we stay past 8 o'clock for a minute now. Funmny, nobody says anything to us......
Awesome, although us legal assistants have been ordering cristal when we stay past 8 o'clock for a while now. Funny, nobody says anything to us......
Awesome, although us legal assistants have been ordering cristal when we stay past 8 o'clock for a while now. Funny, nobody says anything to us......
Any idea who this kid was? What school at least ($10 says Columbia)...
Whether he gets an offer depends on his law school because SASMF don't want to piss off a school whose grads they actually have some trouble attracting. Harvard = offer; Georgetown = no offer.
Kids these days are all messed up. Objective data is the only way to differentiate.