Biglaw, Summer Associates

Can A Summer Associate Please Blow A Goat Or Something?

Perhaps these summers just lack inspiration? Let’s review ACTUAL INCIDENTS in summer associate history.

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You’ve had your fun. Now go get drunk at lunch and throw up in a partner’s office.

We’re not encouraging bestiality — necessarily — but seriously, can someone living the life in one of America’s top Biglaw firms just do something wildly embarrassing? The summer is racing toward conclusion, and it’s been a complete snoozer. We put our faith in you, the youth of this industry, to take massive stockpiles of privilege and copious amounts of alcohol and give us something truly great. Instead you’re just “working,” like “professionals.”

Goddamned millennials.

Make no mistake, we don’t need a summer associate scandal to boost traffic around here. In fact, traffic is the opposite of the problem. We can get traffic numbers by the bushel because every day a tacky, gold-plated buffoon has another high-stakes collision with the law. If he’s not firing reshuffling his lawyers, he’s picking fights with his Attorney General, or throwing his administration into the maw of the ACLU, or populating the Sixth Circuit with anti-gay bloggers. Seriously. Dear Democrats, if you every figure out how to get back in the White House, I’ll be expecting a Second Circuit seat for being “not-a-bigoted-prick blogger.” It seems only fair if this is what’s passing the vetting process these days.

But it’s all so wearying. Of course it’s newsworthy and it’s important, but just give us something — anything — else. Let me break up the day with a summer mooning the rest of the firm. The only summer associate scandal we’ve had this summer involved a summer allegedly making racist remarks on the job and let’s be honest, that’s not far enough from the daily Trump beat.

I know the legal market has changed, and the heady days of devil-may-care summer associates may be lost to history, but someone out there has to still have a bit of the old firebrand in them. Perhaps these summers just lack inspiration? Fair enough. Let’s review some ACTUAL INCIDENTS in summer associate history:

* Some mild flashing. Thankfully the firm seems to have recognized that this wasn’t a scandal as much as a teachable moment. Still, even minor incidents like this aren’t bubbling up this year.

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* There was the woman who took off her clothes and jumped into the Hudson River? Right the f**k off Chelsea Piers. The Coast Guard had to fish her out. And she got an offer, so maybe the rest of you should loosen up.

* A mistaken-identity slapping incident. Sure. “Mistaken identity.” Yeah, there’s no way a summer would want to slap a full-time lawyer. Nope.

* Creating a love triangle with a junior associate and the managing partner of the firm. Frankly, the only problem here is she got caught.

Look, maybe you have no stomach for creating a scandal. Then just abruptly quit to go farming. That’s a perfectly viable story at this point. If you don’t send me something like that in the next hour, I’m really going to have to stare into the abyss of Scaramucci’s Twitter feed. Don’t put me in that position.

And don’t think this is all on the summer associates. Full-time attorneys can definitely lend a helping hand by devising bizarre sexual exchanges or start hiding guns in the office for summers to discover.

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I’m begging you Biglaw. Give the audience some schadenfreude to lap up as we enter the dog days of summer. You have the power.

Let’s make summer associate programs great again.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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