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The ‘Experience O’Melveny’ for Summer Associates

Thursday, October 15, 2009 11:38 AM - By Kashmir Hill

OMelveny Myers OMM logo.jpgLast month, we wrote about a five-year strategic plan created by O’Melveny & Myers. In our initial post, we focused on O’Melveny’s expectations for partners and associates in the future. We skipped over this piece of the plan, focused on summer associates. From a section of the plan entitled “Talent Development”:

Identify future junior associates who will advance the vision of the firm by…creating an intensive summer program experience — “Experience O’Melveny” — that prepares incoming associates for the successful practice of law.

We particularly like that the summer associate program will be “Experience O’Melveny” going forward. It made us think of the Imax Experience — like a real movie but better — or a roller coaster at Six Flags — sure to thrill and cause nausea.

We imagine what “Experience O’Melveny” will look like, after the jump.

Our purely fictional rendering of “Experience O’Melveny”:

Oh future Biglaw lawyers of America. What are you looking for this summer? Do you want a humdrum SA gig or do you want the Experience O’Melveny?

If you hesitated for even a second in answering that question, you can just walk away right now. Don’t walk actually. Run. Part of Experience O’Melveny is that our summer associates will be responsible for tracking you down, “The Most Dangerous Game” style. We wish you luck in your future Biglaw endeavors elsewhere and hope you’re good at hiding your tracks.

For those who shouted Experience O’Melveny at the top of their lungs and started pounding your chests and jumping up and down as if starting salaries just got upped to 190k, you are the ones we want. The brave. The bold. The manic.

This summer, you will see things you’ve never seen before. Experience O’Melveny is an action-packed thrill ride that will leave you desperate for an offer. You will doc review like you’ve only dreamed of. You will legal research the hell out of cases. You will talk to partners who will. Blow. Your. Mind.

It will be fun. It will also be challenging. There will be 72 hour days where we will test your sleep deprivation powers and your abilities to survive on one order of Chinese noodles and all the coffee you can drink. We will have doc review contests where we set you up in a room with five other summers and see who can go through 10 boxes of discovery most rapidly. Partners and associates will be watching. And cheering for their favorites. There will be legal memo competitions. Who can draft fastest and best? You will be graded.

There may also be hang-gliding challenges.

The O’Melveny Experience will be lengthy. We know many firms are cutting back on the length of their summer associate programs. Ours is a fulsome 20 weeks, and we’re hiring 5,000 summer associates. You heard that right: 5,000 summer associates for 20 weeks. But we’re doing this a little different this year. At the end of every two week period, half of the summer associates will be voted off the O’Melveny Island. We are trying to find the best junior associates in the world. The very best. And we want to try a new approach. Only the strong will survive.

One other thing. The O’Melveny experience pays and pays well. You will make the pro-rated salary of a non-equity partner. But only if you survive the Island. Only those remaining at the end of the summer will be paid. That will be fewer than 10 of the 5,000 who started with us. You will have earned it.

Now, who wants to sign up for the on-campus interview and run the Gladiator-style obstacle course?

Earlier: The New Biglaw Business Model, According to O’Melveny & Myers

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