Summer Associates Happy With Paychecks, Unhappy With Biglaw’s Diversity

We knew that when it came time for summer associates to rank satisfaction with this year’s programs, their reviews would be absolutely, positively glowing. After all, the vast majority of them received substantial pay raises after Cravath bumped up its salary scale so that first-year associates would earn $180,000 per year (as opposed to a mere $160,000). Average pay for summer associates increased to $3,289 per week this year, from $3,030 last year, with 85 percent of summers expecting to leave the firms with a job offer in hand. A sudden influx of cash coupled with the majority of Biglaw firms’ decadent summer social events made for incredibly happy summer associates.

The overall average pay for summer associates increased to $3,289 a week, from $3,030 last year. Summer associates were optimistic about their future job prospects. About 85 percent expected to receive a job offer from their firm, and 64.4 percent predicted that they’d still be at the firm in five years, roughly the same figures as last year. They rated their overall level of worry about job opportunities 3.95 out of 5, with 5 meaning not worried at all. That figure was up from 3.84 last year and 2.76 in 2009.

These were the conclusions drawn from the American Lawyer’s 2015 Summer Associate Survey. Am Law polled 4,200 law students at the nation’s largest firms about their summer experiences and used the results to rank 93 programs.

Once again, this summer’s overall rankings were overwhelmingly positive, with their overall level of worry about job opportunities coming in at a 3.95 out of 5 (with 5 meaning not worried at all). This was up from last year’s results (3.84), and significantly up from 2009, when jobs were figments of summer associates’ imaginations (2.76). Perhaps their swelling confidence is because money does make the grass look greener.

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 10 summer programs of 2016, as ranked by American Lawyer:

There was a major shake-up in the rankings this year, and some firms that were in the top 10 last year sank (some like stones). Silly summers, we thought you loved your firms!

Nonetheless, congrats are in order for both Choate Hall & Stewart and Kaye Scholer for receiving perfect scores from their summers. This is Choate’s third year in the summer spotlight, and Kaye Scholer joins the firm at No. 1 for the second year in a row. 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 Crowell & Moring and Hughes Hubbard. You can see how all 93 summer programs ranked at the American Lawyer.

Here are some additional details on how these Biglaw firms stacked up:

A total of 13 firms earned a 5 out of 5 on the overall place to work category, including the top 10 performers on our list. Along with the two tied for first, they are Crowell & Moring, O’Melveny & Myers, Paul Hastings, Duane Morris, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Schulte Roth & Zabel and Hughes Hubbard & Reed.

The summer associates who responded to our survey gave their firms an average score of 4.847 out of 5, with the lowest-scoring firm, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, earning a still-respectable 4.4.

What was the biggest complaint summer associates had this year? A lack of diversity at their firms. Am Law reports that about 100 survey respondents mentioned diversity as an area that needed improvement. Here’s just one of those complaints:

“It seems like the leaders of the firm rest on certain good points without thinking about what to do better,” wrote one Davis Polk summer associate. “While it’s amazing that 57 percent of the summer associates are women, that doesn’t explain what we’re doing to make sure women are on the path to partnership and are supported along the way. It’s great to have affinity groups for every underrepresented group, but what are we doing beyond affinity groups to ensure that diverse attorneys are getting client interaction and substantive work to ensure they are promoted?”

Biglaw firms’ incoming associates truly care about social issues, diversity being only one of them, and regardless of how much money they make, they’re still going to want to be employed at a firm that pays attention to what they want and need. Millennial lawyers are the wave of the future in Biglaw firms, so it’s time to stop paying lip service to things like gender equality, diversity, and work/life balance, and actually put those thoughts into action. Your associates will thank you when they arrive at the firm in a few years.

Choate Hall, Kaye Scholer Again Top Summer Associate Rankings [American Lawyer]
Summer Associates Survey: 2016 National Rankings [American Lawyer]

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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.