Day Pitney’s New Definition of Summer
You really have to take a step back and think about what summer associate programs used to be in order to appreciate what they are becoming. It is hard to imagine that a recruitment model that firms used for years is suddenly so “outmoded” that some firms are doing away with it entirely.
Day Pitney isn’t canceling its summer program, but the firm is making significant changes. The firm issued a statement about its new summer mission:
Day Pitney announced today that beginning in May 2010 the firm will alter its traditional summer associate program to focus on apprenticeships.The summer apprenticeship program will be an eight-week course designed to prepare law students for the practice of law through practical, day-to-day applications and on-the-job training. Apprentices will learn by shadowing Day Pitney lawyers and working with firm professionals in one-on-one coaching scenarios. They will also collaborate with lawyer teams handling ongoing client matters. The practice-based learning approach will be supplemented with focused training workshops and diversity and community service activities designed to teach law students about the firm’s culture and key core values.
Why does the firm have to change the program to have “on-the-job training”? What does “day-to-day applications” even mean? What was wrong with the old way?
Actually, don’t answer that. We all know what was wrong with the old way. Let’s embrace the new way of doing things after the jump.
According to Day Pitney, the firm is looking to emphasize training through its summer program:
“We have decided to move beyond the traditional assignment-based summer associate program towards something that better suits the needs of law students in preparing them to become good practicing attorneys,” said Peter Wilson, Jr., the firm’s Director of Diversity and Legal Recruiting. “The newly designed program expands beyond reading, research, and writing assignments. We want a program that revolves around the key values that we stress for our attorneys - education, career development and the importance of working as a team.”The program will initially be rolled out in two offices: Hartford, Conn. and Florham Park, N.J. It will consist of two rotating four-week training courses in either distinct departments or combinations of complementary practice areas. As part of the curriculum the apprentices will have the opportunity to work closely with a team made up of partners, associates, and counsel specially chosen based upon experience, seniority, and effective mentoring skills.
Better training! Partner contact! As long as the pay is the same, prospective summers should be signing up in droves …
Day Pitney has not responded to our questions about the pay scale for the new summer program. But we do have a quote from a tipster that is working at Day Pitney:
No mention of compensation “adjustment.” They apparently just opted to omit that lede rather than bury it.
You know what is funny, a lot of students would actually appreciate a summer program based on practical training, as long as the pay was market level.
Does the new Day Pitney program pay as much as the old one? We’ll have to wait and see.
Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Second Round of Layoffs at Day Pitney
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Day PiTTTney
"So but we do have a quote from a tipster that is working at Day Pitney:"
"So but we do have a quote from a tipster that is working at Day Pitney:"
Firms should eliminate the letter "T" from their names.
shart 'n fart all night long :)
Sharttting is so Boston female. Definitely not Hamptons material.
ikk
I thought we finally had an Elie post without an elusive fuckup, but apparently it's already been stealth-edited. So, Elie, are they intentional? Is it a game to see how long it takes the comment thread to spot them?
I just love how large firms (and I worked for one, so I know) are just know figuring out that they need to train people to make them more effective lawyers as opposed to relying on the old sink-or-swim model that worked sooo well. Amazing, this new invention they call training so that the client can get real value!
Training is all BS. You learn by doing. This is not the way to teach law students.
Day Sh*tney
DOJ SECURE
Anybody want to pound me in the ass later and then have some of my homemade German potato salad?
D Lat
"You know what is funny, a lot of students would actually appreciate a summer program based on practical training, as long as the pay was market level."
Are you kidding me? I don't know any summers who want any sort of practical training or hardwork, they want the free ride w/ expensive lunches, yachting excursions, and no-questions-asked $3k+ per week salary.
Look at firms who in the past have tried to do practical stuff - like whatever firm it was that has the "Boot Camp" - their recruiting struggled big time because nobody wanted to be involved with that shit.
Yes, expect a downward adjustment to your compensation if you take on this apprentice program.
Better training in exchange for lower pay.
Somehow I expect the training to be substandard and consist of being yelled at by partners and copying lots of boring documents.
Not to mention the fact that 2009 DP summers won't know until September about offers.
I actually wish I had gotten this treatment during my 2L summer experience. At the Biglaw firm where I summered, we had innumerable "parties" for the summer assocites, which weren't really parties, but opportunties for summers to kiss ass. I was also subjected to constant interaction with the firm's "face" people who made lame jokes that I was forced to laugh at and kept smiling at me and giving me friendly slaps on the shoulder like they were used car salesmen. The whole thing was about as much fun as getting kicked in the balls. I didn't learn a damn thing about the practice of law. The pay was good though.
I find this whole thing hilarious. Omg, actual work as a summer. Good lord, I emailed clients as a summer and did real, substantive (albeit easy) work. It was a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around in my office all day or doing fake memos. And I hate firm events since honestly I am not friends with my coworkers, I worm with them.
I hope this old model dies. And anyone that chose a firm based on how fum their sa experience was supposed to be deserves to get laid off
10 - Department of Jalopy
COUCH SECURE
Does anyone really expect these changes to stick around?? This is not the 1930's. I am sure the class of 2012 or 2013 will have their share of summer lobster.
When I started reading this I was sure that Elie would miss the obvious angle that this is nothing but rhetoric on which to hang a giant pay cut, but I was wrong. While you did get a nudge from your tipster, I still congratulate you Elie, you're slightly less dumb than I thought you were.
9, agreed, one learns by doing....something that is actually fucking useful to the client as opposed to bullshit memos about issues that have already been addressed or that the partner has so little understanding about that they can't even properly articulate it and are sending someone off to get them started. Pulease. Why don't you study up on the advice that douchebag whatever his name is giving re how to be an even bigger asshole.
9 - So law school is BS. Nice career choice.
"This is not the 1930's."
Indeed. It is worse unless we create a global war to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing base.
We have a large class of citizens (the Baby Boomers) that killed productivity and promised themselves all sorts of entitlements (pensions, SS) that they neglected to fund. They are just now starting to retire, and we'll have 20-30 years left of paying off their entitlements, unless anyone has the balls in DC to cut them off.
18 - That is one of the most blissfully naive statements I've seen in a long time. Wake up - change is afoot whether you like it or not.
Nice to see so many expensive law degrees committed to proof-reading blog posts. How do you bill that out?
Proposition 13 fucked California and now look where it is at right now.
The anti-tax rhetoric and tax cuts is now (slowly) bringing the federal government to its knees through the widening deficits.
A lot of the right wing want services but don't want to pay for it. And they actually believe that Reagan was a golden age and the economic prosperity was paid for through tax cuts. Somehow, they neglect to understand that what was paid for was through borrowings, ie deficits.
There is a cognitive dissonance on the right and it isn't pretty when exposed to the white light of day.
22 - Wake up, shave off the jive patch and get a clue.
Neither pensions nor social security were created by the Baby Boomers. Did Barney not cover that while using his inside voice? Did Bert & Ernie not cover that with you?
22 - Wake up, shave off the jive patch and get a clue.
Neither pensions nor social security were created by the Baby Boomers. Did Barney not cover that while using his inside voice? Did Bert & Ernie not cover that with you?
22 - You put the twit in twitter. Clearly the depth of your knowledge base can be plumbed in 140 characters or less.
26
Bert and Ernie covered that when you want services you pay for it.
Bert and Ernie also pointed out to Bonzo the chimp in the 1980s that you can't get services in perpetuity if you are constantly borrowing to pay for it.
Unfortunately, Reagan didn't listen to Bonzo the chimp and now look where we are.
It's great that the firm wants to announce this change in their approach to new lawyers, but will it really mean anything other than a reduction in the number of expensive dinners and themed parties? Partners have been using the summer associate model for decades - how will they suddenly switch gears? it's just rhetoric. No partner is going to be cool with having a rising 3L "shadow" him or her all day.
29 - You ignorant slut. I thought your miracle worker Bill (Boffo) Clinton fixed that? Oh wait, you mean economic cycles are driven by business and enterprise, NOT by the President?
What services are you mumbling on about?
25 - Your arguments, such as they are, might be more compelling if they were put forth in a coherent manner.
What talk-show host soundbit edo you be trying to repeats here at?
26-28, can you fucking read....I never said they created them. I said they didn't fund them. And they aren't funded. Do you have a point?
-22 (apparently the only non-idiot and the only one that can actually make an argument).
25 - You are way off base. California's rampant spending on all sorts of garbage programs, many of whom provide benefits for illegals paying no taxes, are to blame for California's financial troubles. "Raise taxes" is the statist answer to everything, but it is almost never the right answer. Why should citizens be asked to do with less when government will never, ever do so?
what is a day pitney?
DP should be cancelling its summer program in total. There is no work for their current stable of associates, stealth and announced lay off have been rampant in the last year. As a former DP summer associate, a "beneficiary" of the system, I can say without hesitation that this firm should NOT have a summer associate program - at least not until they pull itself out of the hole and get their current crop of 1st/2nd/3rd years billing more than 1100 hours a year. Current and future DP summers beware: this firm, as it stands, has no real place for you, unless you get very lucky with the right group in the right office - i.e. do not go to this firm if you have any other option.
@36 -
Would you recommend that I accept a position with their IP group?
I'm better than 25.
21- Yes, law school is BS. But why does this have anything to do with my career choice? The way to learn as a summer is to get actual substantive work (e.g. Williams & Connolly style). No training seminars. No shadowing. Work. The real stuff. This Day Pitney program (and I have no idea who Day Pitney is) looks like BS to me.
22 is correct. The younger generations should wake up and stop paying exorbitant taxes to keep people alive well past their useful lives. If you want to live 30 years past retirement, you pay for it. Don't bill me and my kids.
Enough with the prescription drugs and state-of-the-art health care for geriatrics. Glad you enjoyed the ride. Time to make way for the next group.
I didn't realize that the company that made postal metering machines had a summer program. Good for them.
22/33 - Can you fucking be articulate and accurate?
Aside from being self-congratulatory, what points have you made? If your intellect matched your ego this could be engaging. It's not.
SS is funded through taxes - presume they come out of your checks as well, yes? No? You are part of the underfunding you idiot.
This apprenticeship concept should be integrated in the first-year as as an associate and maybe into the second also. Thumbs up!
Back to the good ol days of an apprenticeship before being granted access to the practice of law.
"SS is funded through taxes - presume they come out of your checks as well, yes? No? You are part of the underfunding you idiot."
Actually, the underfunding came when the U.S. was a an economic and manufacturing powerhouse post WW-II, had very little competition and the actuarial geniuses then didn't realize that large numbers of people would live well into their 80's (or even 90's).
Is that point articulate enough for you? What the fuck is yours? Do you even begin to realize how much we're fucked? We're living in a Drier/Okun/Madoff ponzi scheme, and those of us young enough to work and pay taxes are on the ass end of it.
They talk about it like they are running a school ("the curriculum"). Perhaps they will be charging the participants tuition rather than paying the participants anything. This real world training should be very valuable, right? So maybe the law firm expects to get paid for it. That would be yet another kick in the teeth to law hopefuls.
@37 -
36 here. It definitely depends on the office. But I can say that generally the IP practice across the firm are not where the big problems are - that might be in the "very lucky" group that I mentioned. Be very wary of their corporate or litigations groups, in general - not secure at all and, in select offices, just horrifically mismanaged.
Johnny Tremain was an "apprentice" at a silversmiths - you know how much he was paid? A daily ration of whippings and a year-end bonus consisting of a disfigured hand!
Those law students should be paid extra for spending their summers in Hartford or even worse, New Jersey.
Elie, please be more blatant that all lawyers/prospective lawyers care about is money. It really does wonders for peoples' perception of us as a whole. Tks.
In every other field, apprenticeship = no pay.
Day Pitney has done the ultimate screwing of law students. After promising and assuring its summer associates that the firm already considered the economy when extending offers to the summers of 2009, Day kept the summers waiting until this weekend about its plans. Then, without even any personal contact at all, no calls, no explanations, the summers get a form letter from Day Pitney. Way to go, Day Pitney. You have shown eveyone how NOT to behave professionally. It is not that you could not extend offers cause your firm apparently is so weak financially - it is the manner in which you did it. Bunch of cowards - could not even tell the summers to their face.