Summer Associate Programs Have Seemingly Changed Over The Years
Are the best days of summer associate programs behind us?
Over the past several years, I have interacted with several summer associates at different types of firms and had the chance to ask about their experiences. It seems that the summer associate experience has changed much in the past several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the legal profession has altered in response to the work-from-home revolution. Now that the summer season is fully upon us, I recently reflected on my own experience and how, over the past decade or so, the summer associate experiences have changed.
For those who do not know, a summer associate is a law school student (usually between their second and third years) who works at a law firm over the summer with the expectation that they will earn a full-time position at a firm after graduating if they perform well. Traditionally, summer associates get paid nearly the same amount (if not the exact same amount) as a full-time associate at a given law firm, and they enjoy a variety of social events throughout the summer so they can interact with people at a firm. Usually, if summer associates did not do anything controversial, they were almost guaranteed full-time spots at the firm after they graduated from law school.
I completed my summer associate gig at a Biglaw shop in the summer of 2011, and the experience was mostly typical of what lawyers envision about these jobs. The law firm at which I worked was insulated from the Great Recession due to a large portfolio of work, so the summer program was not impacted by the economic downturn of the era. During the summer, we summer associates attended golf and tennis outings, pool parties, numerous lunches and dinners, softball games, and all of the other social events that summer associates typically attend during their time at a firm. We did not complete much “real” work, and we spent substantial amounts of time on pro bono matters and business development tasks since firm management was not too concerned with billing for our time.
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From speaking with more recent summer associates, a shift seems to have occurred in recent years. Most summer associates are not expected to come to the office five days a week, so there is less of a social element to the program than when I was a summer associate. Moreover, each summer associate I talked to has conveyed that they usually work on real matters and that law firms bill that time to their clients. I am not sure if my law firm was unique, or if there has been a shift toward billing the time of summer associates, and I’d love feedback to try to unpack this potential change. It definitely seems that few firms these days have a more “freewheeling” summer program where the emphasis is on socializing.
From my perspective, it seems like the heyday of summer associate programs was right before the Great Recession, when law firms were printing money and were willing to spend serious cash on ensuring that people (both summer associates and others) at law firms had a good time over the summer. Some of the older lawyers I worked with at my Biglaw shop told me about their summer associate experiences in 2006, which I believe included a party bus and a very expensive bar tab charged to a law firm. People apparently stayed up partying well into the wee hours, and everyone had their cars home paid for by the law firm. If other summer associates of the era could confirm that this was the zenith of summer associate indulgence, feel free to reach out.
In any case, it makes me somewhat sad for the legal profession if summer associates do not get to have the same fun as I did when I was a summer associate. Hopefully law firms remember that socializing is an important element of a summer associate experience, since it lets law firms better judge the personalities of summer associates, and this allows everyone to have a better time over the summer.
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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
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