Career services offices have helped their students get wise to the power of the Internet and stupid Facebook postings. Students are, imo, increasingly aware that slime on the Internet lives forever, and that hiring partners are fairly adept with Google and social networking sites.

They should be. It's been literally beaten into their head that stupid activity that gets published attached to their name will be found and it will cost them interviews, jobs, and advancements.

I suspect that Gen Y finally learning some discretion has combined with the economy to really deter moron behavior. Or at least, for them to be discreet about that moron behavior.

i dont think people are thinking about ending up on facebook picture when they are shit-faced from a night with an open bar. it's prob more that the ones observing such behavior are more careful about sending in such stories for fear of bringing attention to their summer class and to their firm

I'm curious which firm it was. Probably Dorsey.

- Minneapolis SA

No surprise. You haven't done any stories about anything else this summer either.

BATEMAN
I'm...at a loss. He was part of that whole...Yale thing,
you know.

KIMBALL
Yale thing?

A pause.

BATEMAN
Yeah...Yale thing.

KIMBALL
What do you mean...Yale thing?

A pause.

BATEMAN
Well, I think for one that he was probably a closet
homosexual. Who did a lot of cocaine...that Yale thing.

Most of our summers are just douchbags who get too drunk and act like they're in a frat. However, nothing to exciting. I wish one of them would do something hilarious.

Firms are probably working summer associates hard this summer to maximize their productivity. Less time for debauchery.

Even John McCain can do "a Google".

Uhh. Out in California it's still happening, we're just not immediately emailing Lat about it anymore.

9:09 - Attended Yale

2: stupid Facebook postings? How can employers see those without befriending you?

We're trying not to be complete baboons at functions because of the economy.

#12 is a worried SA with questionable facebook postings.

Firms have probably finally smartened up and starting warning associates and summers about spreading gossip online. Why did it take so long?

Paraphrase of Lat's article:

Why won't more law students ruin their careers so I can make money off telling everyone about it? Come on people, throw me a bone here.

Is it possible that SA lore was inflated in the first place? In retrospect, I don't think that anything worse than the Aquagirl anecdote ever happened, and even that was blown out of proportion.

Seriously, Lat, what do you expect? Someone to vomit all over the hiring partner before falling down thirty flights of stairs? I can't even think of a hypothetical scenario for true SA lore.

Lat, we need more. I've got a lot of summers who are flagrant douchebags, but I need a hint to narrow it down. Firm? Drink of choice? Genre of transgression?

--Minneapolis Associate

could it really be that people are so scared by the crappy job market that they're behaving?

nah. no self-respecting debaucherous twentysomething should let that stop them. :)

Thank you, gaffe-happy media and ATL! Now we can apply the scandal-heavy accounting standards of politics to everyday associates who wanted nothing more than a hot meal, a decent SA job, and debt management! Obviously, since It's too much to provide people with a little privacy, let's plaster their names and inane, ultimately inconsequential, drunken behavior all over the internet so it ruins their careers! And you know what -- let's complain when they fail to do so!

Nothing too insane, but I heard about a pushy EAPD summer in Connecticut. Apparently she got the firm to send her to an event in NYC, then got a $600 hotel room for the night and billed the company for it. Good times.

Michele Landis Dauber, a professor of law and sociology at Stanford Law School, sees a socioeconomic factor at play as well. “Remember that lawyers, even those from top 10 schools, are not the children of the elite,” she said. “They are the children of the professional and middle classes. Elite children go to business school, not law school. [Law students] are seeing their parents’ homes lose value, perhaps their parents or other relatives lose their jobs or see their pension funds shrinking. … In that environment, I think ‘head down’ is the proper position, and they seem to be assuming it.”

Seriously? Does Prof. Dauber have any data to back this up? Does she believe that "business school" only means HBS and Wharton? Is she completely ignorant of the socio-economic type of students a who populate top law schools who then populate the type of firms at issue in Lat's piece? Lat - this is perhaps the most asinine, off-the-mark quotation you could have found. You really need to work on some fundamental reporting skills.

21: everyone at my school is middle-class or lower. I don't know of any bluebloods. They're all hard-working strivers.

-- T10 students

ATL is a victim of its own success in perpetuating these stories. People are cognizant of this website and refuse to participate in its folly.

Co-sign 23
Maybe one or two things have happened at my firm, and definitely things have gone down at my friend's firms, but we're sure as shit not spreading it.

One story of a summer associate hooking up with a midlevel at one DC firm, getting found out, having the whole office talk about it, only to claim it is at an end--but it's not. Again, not really comical, just pathetic.

20, have you ever paid for a hotel room in New York? $600 sounds pretty standard to me (once you add in all the crazy taxes). Did you expect her to pay for it herself?

are you joking, 26? hotel rooms are cheaper in nyc than in boston. if you can't find a decent 3/3.5 star hotel room in nyc for under $250, you're not searching correctly or it's new year's or something.

10:05, that seems to be the point of Lat's article.

"4. The Twain Hypothesis. Are past reports of summer associate scandals greatly exaggerated? This explanation may be the most interesting, if disheartening. Maybe there really haven’t been that many summer scandals in past years—they were simply hyped more."

http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/tart-reform-facing-heat-legal-ladies-and-laddies-stay-buttoned?page=0%2C1

26, maybe I should clarify.

The event was on a Friday. She decided to stay down in NYC for the evening so that she could hang out with friends the next day, then decided to bill the firm for her hotel room. It's not as if they sent her down there for a mutli-day affair.

And again, I noted that it wasn't anything major - just an example of an SA without much class or respect.

The economy is pretty crappy, and this fact, combined with the fear of being "Abovethelawed" has cut down on a lot of scandals.

And there has been summer scandals that are pretty salacious but people aren't as inclined to discuss them because of the above factors. It's not just gossip--you could be costing someone their job.

Please please post the Minneapolis gossip - at least say what firm it was!

Well, at least one billionaire's son was at HLS when I was there and didn't the Bush family send one of their brood to YLS?

I too wonder if Dauber has any data to back her assertion or if she's just talking out of her posterier.

32: I like how you rely on two instances to disprove a trend. Yes, there are billionaires in law schools and impoverished people at HBS, but that's not what the law professor is saying.

33: Learn to read. I responded to this assertion:

"Elite children go to business school, not law school. [Law students] are seeing their parents’ homes lose value, perhaps their parents or other relatives lose their jobs or see their pension funds shrinking. … In that environment, I think ‘head down’ is the proper position, and they seem to be assuming it."

Now if the professor wants to qualify her statement by pointing to a trend or the relative propensity of groups to attend law v. business school (again, based on actual research, not talking out of her a**), that's fine, but her statement, framed in the absolute way that it was, is wrong.

PS: You suck.

Hugs and kisses,

32

Lat, what is going on in Minneapolis? Do share . . .

Add another one to the list of people who aren't sharing in order to spare someone else's career. I've got a story that would be an instant classic, but I don't feel compelled to share it. One of the people involved is probably going to get no-offered no matter what. But there's no reason to bring publicity to the situation and further inflame or concern the hiring partners, especially if it could hurt the other summers who got pulled into the situation. Based on the fact that there's been no mention of it here, clearly the other SAs feel the same way.

Minneapolis firm = Lindquist & Vennum

32/34 - Defensive much? You make a stupid comment you have to expect someone to point it out. That's the interactive nature of blogs. Resorting to "A-game" vocabulary in response only identifies you as a law student (or what you would call a "TTT law student").

Lindquist & Vennum, not Dorsey!

38 - WTF are you talking about? If you think words like "relative" and "propensity" are "A-game vocabulary", then you need get off this blog and go back to reading Highlights for Children.

32/34

PS - They always hide the fork in the tree.

I think the Minneapolis rumor came out of Xoxo: http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=838323&mc=17&forum_id=2

36 = the type of d-bag in 2nd grade who used to bring candy to school and not share it with anyone....and he thought he was being cool but everyone else thought he was a dork.

@ 27....$250/night for a hotel room in NYC? I hope you don't seriously believe that. As others have noted, $600/night in NYC is not outrageous by any stretch.

Sort of sad that this site needs summer associate scandals in order to keep its readership high.

If you don't like this site, then don't read it.

44 -- You are an idiot. I did not say that I didn't like this site.

Don't visit Xoxo from your work computer....

46 -- why?

46: Are you affiliated with ATL and so don't want people going to xoxo?

I don't think there's that much competition between ATL and Xoxo. Unless all the Xoxo posters are actually headhunters and Brian Leiter is a latering recruiting firm.

xoxo is a wretched hive of scum and villainy; the mos eisley of the legal community on the internet.

Traffic on this site seems to have really dropped. Need a scandal!