Biglaw Firm Decimates Summer Associate Program

Major firm announces that it's more or less eliminating its summer associate program. Is this the beginning of a trend? And if it is, is that a good thing?

The go-to career path for a young lawyer — in particular a young, T14-trained lawyer — runs from a good school through a summer associate program funded by a Biglaw firm, and then right back into that firm after 3L year and the bar exam (and maybe a clerkship or two). We take it for granted, but a few people are out there trying to shake up the system.

Add Quinn Emanuel to that list of forces looking to disrupt the traditional model. In an email to the firm’s attorneys sent out yesterday afternoon, John Quinn explained that the firm would be more or less dropping its summer associate program and recruiting only 3Ls, clerks, and laterals. It’s a bold new plan, but does it make sense?

Sara Randazzo of the Law Blog described Quinn’s announcement:

John Quinn told the firm’s attorneys Monday that the litigation shop is pretty much done with summer-associate programs. In virtually all large law firms, summer associates—culled from the ranks of elite law schools—spend a few months at a firm after their second year of school and are invited to return full-time after graduation.

That’ll no longer be the case at Quinn Emanuel.

“Although we do our best to ensure that summer associates do real and meaningful work, summer programs are unavoidably unrealistic to a degree,” Mr. Quinn told the firm’s attorneys in an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Especially when it comes to the trial work we do here, it’s difficult to parcel out projects that fit within the two months summer associates are with us.”

It’s absolutely true that two months is a tight timeframe for training. On the other hand, that’s always been true of major litigation. From personal experience, my primary summer associate assignment at Cleary landed me at the bottom of a six-person team on a case that dragged on for years. Indeed, when the case finally ended, I was the senior associate on the matter. But just because the case ran long didn’t preclude me from educational (if not always interesting) projects. Discrete research topics, meetings with the USAO, document review, even making memos of conference calls. Maybe not Earth-shattering work, but valuable work for a rising 3L and, more importantly, work that freed up more experienced junior associates to focus on more important tasks than memorializing a 45-minute call with co-counsel about the finer points of “who cares?”

And while trials can be more frenetic than civil litigation in simpler times, there are still pre-trial orders to draft and bench memos to research. And just sending a summer to the courthouse is still a useful endeavor — law schools can’t really provide law students with a better experience than sitting in on a high-stakes Quinn Emanuel trial.

The more important point, though, is that providing the “practical experience” component of a law school education shouldn’t be a law firm’s job. Despite “practice-ready” becoming a law school buzzword, most practical training — especially among the T14 schools and Biglaw firms — is farmed out to the private sector during a 2L summer. Not unlike professional sports leagues requiring college experience before they invest their scarce millions in athletes, law schools rely on firms to take on raw recruits and teach them how to be lawyers before the school slaps a degree on them, setting the student free to peddle their Biglaw-financed training wherever he or she wants. And while Quinn Emanuel will still ultimately provide the lion’s share of associate training, it will be doing so with its actual associates — permanent employees — that it can cultivate on long-term projects instead of loading them up with discrete projects.

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After all, when it comes to training, one could argue that summer associate programs are little more than one-semester clinics with a hefty payday and a Broadway show. A firm can provide much more comprehensive training with full-time, long-term employees. Bear in mind how much lawyers can forget in a year (or two, or three) away. My first-year orientation was basically a redux of summer associate orientation — that’s a couple weeks of redundancy that Quinn Emanuel can save right there.

And, as explained by the WSJ, Quinn Emanuel has some exciting plans for the money it will save chopping its summer associate program down to a skeleton crew:

Instead, the firm plans to focus its recruiting on third-year law students and judicial clerks. Having a clerkship on a resume has long been attractive to law firms, and such clerkships can often earn young lawyers a significant signing bonus.

The summer program at Quinn won’t be totally dead, Mr. Quinn said in the email, but will be limited to 5-10 students firmwide (right now they have in the range of 50). Those students will then go back and spread the word about Quinn on their campuses.

“We will redirect money saved on the summer associate program to signing bonuses for summers, third-year students and judicial clerks who join us on a permanent basis,” he said in the email.

More money in associate pockets. Hard to argue with that. And necessary if Quinn’s plan becomes the new model, because rising 3Ls will be heading into their last year several grand light and they’ll need to recoup that somewhere to stay ahead of their debt. Hey, maybe if this catches on we can finally put an end to the third year of law school? We can dare to dream.

And I doubt Quinn Emanuel will have much trouble attracting talent. Forget the five to ten golden children the firm will keep on as summers, Quinn is one of the most profitable firms in the country (#2 PPP, #3 RPL), with top-notch litigators, great work, and an awesome perk.

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But how many five-star restaurants will miss the revenue from luxurious three-hour lunches? Won’t someone please think of them?

(Flip to the next page to read John Quinn’s email in full.)

Quinn Emanuel to Scale Back Summer Associate Program [WSJ Law Blog]

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