Ranking Summer Associate Programs: You Were Optimistic About Offers (And Getting Paid More)

Which firm came out on top, and how much more are summer associates being paid?

When we covered the American Lawyer’s annual summer associate satisfaction survey last year, we noted that “[b]eing a summer associate just isn’t what it used to be.” All work and no play may make summer associates dull boys and girls, but it also makes them highly confident they’ll receive offers of full-time employment when their programs end.

Despite the fact that it’s a “buyer’s market for law firms,” many of them tossed out offers to their summer classes like Mardi Gras beads. Summer associates were no longer praying for offers, as they were in certain years past; no, this summer, they almost expected offers to be handed to them.

These were the conclusions drawn from the American Lawyer’s 2014 Summer Associate Survey. Am Law polled 5,085 law students at the nation’s largest firms about their summer experiences and used the results to rank 96 programs. This year’s crop of would-be lawyers was seemingly at ease about their situations, despite the fact that there is still a general unease permeating through Biglaw.

This summer’s overall rankings were overwhelmingly positive. If you’re a law student trying to figure out where to spend your summer, you’re probably asking: which law firms came out with the highest scores?

Here are the top ten summer programs, as ranked by American Lawyer (click to enlarge):

As you can see, there was a major shake-up in the rankings this year, and firms that were in the top 10 last year either sank (some like stones) or disappeared from the list entirely, likely due to a lack of participation from summer associates, as Am Law required at least 10 completed surveys for a firm’s entry to be viable. For example, Cozen O’Connor, a firm that once clinched the top spot for two years in a row, no longer appears on the list of ranked firms at all. Silly summers, you stole your firm’s bragging rights!

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Nonetheless, congratulations are in order for both Choate Hall & Stewart and Foley Hoag for receiving perfect scores from their summer associates. This is Foley’s second year in the summer spotlight, and Choate Hall joins the firm there after rising up through the rankings. In fact, all of the firms in the top 10 deserve to be praised for their near-perfect scores, especially the ones that soared in this year’s rankings, like Clifford Chance (a firm that was dead last in the 2013 rankings), Kaye Scholer, Crowell & Moring, and Fox Rothschild. You can see how all 96 summer programs ranked over at the American Lawyer.

Perhaps this summer’s programs were so highly rated because the summers themselves were a rather “optimistic group.” Sure, they may be heavily in debt — their overall loan balance was estimated to be about $99,833 — but they were generally happy campers. Here’s more from the Am Law Daily:

Summer associates were only moderately “worried about a declining number of job opportunities available to recent graduates at large law firms,” with a score of 3.692, which was slightly higher than last year’s 3.507 on a scale where “1” meant very worried and “5” meant not worried at all. They also said their classmates were not terribly worried, with an overall score of 4.002, compared with 3.874 last year. As for getting job offers themselves, the summer associates were slightly more confident this year than last, with an overall score of 4.15, compared with 4.07.

Maybe this year’s summer associates were made more confident due to the fact that their gross pay was up by more than 2 percent over last year’s crop of summer associates. This year’s summer associate take-home pay was $3,156.39 each week, up from $3,085.55 in 2013. Hooray for NY to 164K?!

At the end of the day, it seems like summer associates might have been overconfident considering their overall standing as compared to their peers. Recall that just 57 percent of the class of 2013 were employed in full-time positions as lawyers nine months after graduation. It must be really nice to look at the legal world from a place of privilege, so remember to cherish those offers while you’ve still got them.

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Choate Hall, Foley Hoag Take Top Spot in Summer Associate Survey [Am Law Daily]
Summer Associate Survey [American Lawyer]

Earlier: Ranking 2013′s Summer Associate Programs: You Were Very, Very Worried About Being No-Offered