Associate Life Survey: Summer Love... Or Lack Thereof

We have some bad news for this year’s summer associates. Based on Monday’s survey, brought to you by ATL and Lateral Link, about one in four attorneys at your firm didn’t like you.
The number of practicing attorneys who said “Summer associates, hate ’em” narrowly beat the number of practicing attorneys who said “Summer associates, love ’em,” by a margin of 25.06% to 24.82%. And while that edge may not be statistically significant, it still has to sting a little.
Among lawyers who had been practicing for more than two years, the gap widened considerably, to 30% vs. 22%.
And in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Miami, associates of all ages hated summer associates most of all, to the tune of at least 40%.
Mind you, half of practicing respondents were simply neutral on the question — but that’s still pretty cold comfort, in this season of cold offers.
Read more, below the fold.


Summer associates: love ’em or hate ’em, most lawyers thought there were a lot of ’em. About 53% of practicing attorneys said that their firms’ summer programs were too big this year, with 21% calling them “way too big.” This dovetails with some reporting last week in the ABA Journal:

Because of an unexpectedly high acceptance rate, Morrison & Foerster wound up with 140 summer associates this year, compared to the 110 that his 1,160 law firm had sought. [MoFo Chairman Keith] Wetmore said his firm will be more cautious about making offers the next time around.
The New York office of Dorsey & Whitney has taken a different tack and has eliminated its summer program, according to partner Robert Dwyer Jr., who heads that office. Other law firms that are opting out of summer recruiting this year include Chicago-based Arnstein & Lehr and Barnes & Thornburg in Indianapolis, the NLJ writes.

It’s interesting, if depressing, to compare the current climate with 2005, when the NLJ reported that “a still-tepid economic recovery” was making firms “savvier in selecting law students” — which meant that Latham was “bringing in 216 summer associates, compared with 164 last year.” Then again, that article also noted that Coudert Brothers was only hiring 16 summer associates, compared to 21 the previous year.
And when you compare how well Latham is doing today with how Coudert Brothers, well, isn’t, perhaps those supersized summer classes are actually a good sign for the firms that have them.
There was, of course, another prong to Monday’s survey: the LOLcat.
The kitten caboodle trounced haters by more than 6 to 1, with 76% of respondents saying “LOLcats, love ’em” and only 12% saying “hate ’em.”
But even among the haters, 20% of respondents still found summer associates more annoying.
Worse yet, the LOLcat haters were four times as likely to find summer associates worse than Rick Astley than the other way round. Oh noes!
Only one respondent out of 523, however, confessed to hating muppets, too.
Poor kermit.
And poor summers.
It’s not easy being green.

Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

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