Rank Stupidity, Screw-Ups, Summer Associates

Summer Associate of the Day: The Shearman & Sterling Slacker

By  
on

Last week we covered some goings-on — or non-goings-on, to those of you who found them boring — at Shearman & Sterling. Here’s a quick update.
We reported that, according to the firm, there have been no staff layoffs. One source writes:

I’d like to know how they define administrative staff, as they laid off their entire word processing / document production center (i.e legal word processors, proofreaders, EDGAR operators, and supervisors) in February 2007. It has since been disastrously outsourced….

Outsourcing from a year and a half ago isn’t what we had in mind when we asked about recent layoffs. But we pass that along, for what it’s worth; we do aim to be accurate.
In the comments, there were some rumors about start dates for 2009 associates. We’re looking into the rumors and will report back. If you can confirm, please email us.
Update: We’re still waiting for official word from the firm, but one Shearman offeree confirms that yes, start dates for incoming associates next year will be no earlier than November 30, 2009.
Finally, we wondered whether there might be an interesting story surrounding the one out of 140 summer associates who didn’t get an offer. It turns out that there is.
Find out what it takes to get no-offered by Shearman these days, after the jump.


Several sources told us the tale of the no-offered summer. Not only did he not get an offer, but he was actually fired in the middle of the summer program (a la the lesbianic lip-lockers at Lindquist & Vennum).
From one tipster:

The kid got fired mid summer. He got way too drunk at firm events in New York. He split with [a foreign] office, and once he got there apparently it got worse. He no-showed at work, and apparently had [contraband materials] in his firm-provided housing that were discovered by the cleaning crew.

Here’s a more colorful account:

[W]hile he was in the NYC office, he would come in around 11, be aggressive in finding an associate/partner to take him out to lunch. After coming back from lunch, he would roll out of the office and hang with his friends. Then, he would come back around 7-ish and order free dinner and take a company car home….

The summer then went to [an overseas office]. He apparently didn’t show up to work for three days straight, and then emailed his partner advisor at 11 p.m. asking if he needed to come in that day.

I guess the straw that broke the camel’s back was that he outright refused to work on July 4th, which is obviously not observed in [that country]… Shearman flew him back to NYC, then dismissed him soon after.

Sponsored

Moral of the story: when in Rome, do as the Romans do. If that includes working on the Fourth of July, put away the flag pin, and roll up those sleeves.
Standard ATL rules apply. Please don’t mention the summer associate by name or provide further identifying information. Thanks.
P.S. Some might say that, if he was the only no-offered summer in the entire 2008 S&S class, his identity should not be hard to figure out. That may be true. The main point of the “no name” rule is to prevent this story from coming up whenever this person is Googled. Cf. Shakespear Feyissa.
We aren’t required to do leave out names (and other gossip blogs and message boards regularly do include names in such stories). But we have a policy of omitting names, just to be nice.
Of course, summer associates who get no-offered — not just cold-offered, but no-offered — have bigger problems than being mentioned on ATL. Because they don’t have the fig leaf of a cold offer to hide behind, they must explain their lack of an offer to prospective employers anyway.
Earlier: What’s Going on at Shearman & Sterling?

Sponsored

Topics