Should Law Firms Have Summer Associates Working Nights And Weekends?
A summer associate's weekend assignment prompts some backlash. Has everyone gotten too soft on summer work?
The summer associate experience is mostly about long lunches, longer happy hours, and evenings at the ballpark. Firms and Summers are feeling each other out to make sure that they’ve made a promising career match. Or at least a promising “three years and then lateraling somewhere else” match. It’s about recruiting and acclimating to the firm culture so it’s heavy on the networking and socializing and light on the substantive legal work.
That said, it shouldn’t be devoid of substantive legal work. Both parties to this dance should be interested in sussing out if this student is going to be up for working full-time at this particular firm. But have firms become too protective of the Summers?
In the same Reddit thread that inspired this week’s earlier dive into 2024’s most awkward summer associate interactions, one post jumped out:
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This requires a bit of background. Senior associate at the time, we were in the middle of a full blown closing for a huge merger (I’m talking a closing checklist that ran into 30 pages long) and I got a summer associate in over the weekend to help out. I gave them a small task which should have taken an hour, 2 at most, but they were still at it 4 hours later. I popped my head around their office to check in and remarked that it was going too slowly, at which point they had a full on breakdown (tears etc) and accused me of calling them ‘slow in the head’ (absolutely not what I said and contrary to everything I believe in).
I sent them home and pulled two whole days to close by myself. No other associate was available and I didn’t have the capacity for more drama.
A summer associate taking far too long to accomplish a simple task isn’t a surprise and the author correctly seemed to understand this, only intervening to check in after an inordinate amount of time. Despite the response, nothing really suggests the senior associate did anything insulting.
Doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary, honestly.
But then:
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What firm has SAs work weekends and gives them assignments that actually matter? Based on what information you provided, it seems you, or your firm, is the problem, not the SA.
Other critics joined in blasting the idea that a summer associate would work nights or weekends. But is that really the prevailing wisdom? Don’t force the summer associates to bill every weekend or anything, but spending one Saturday helping with a closing checklist seems like a useful work experience.
As for giving “assignments that actually matter,” no one tasked the Summer with an oral argument on Monday. However, there is something to be said for treating summer associates like competent professionals in training. They’re not practice ready, but they’re demonstrably smart students with basic legal training. Handing them a piece of an important assignment gets the Summer excited about their ability to contribute and gives the firm a useful early mentoring opportunity.
Working a limited night or weekend is also part of building that professional trust. In a couple years, the associate is going to be duly pissed off about working the weekend, but as a summer associate, asking them to come in because the firm feels they’re needed enough for this outside-of-normal-office-hours, mission critical assignment is like catnip. It’s probably stupid and only happening because of team leadership’s failures at time management, but it’s about conveying that the student matters to the project.
In this specific story, the task fell into the summer associate Goldilocks zone. As explained in a reply, the Summer had to “insert names (from an excel spreadsheet) into blank placeholders (in word documents).” Now… why that isn’t handled by a mail merge macro is absolutely beyond me. This is technology available since at least the 90s. But whatever. It’s very important work in that it has to get done to finish a critical task, but also not taxing enough to compromise the client by giving it to a rising 3L.
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It’s not “fun” work, but everyone’s practice has some kind of rote, mindless work that lawyers are nonetheless expected to perform. Shielding summer associates from that work entirely doesn’t seem to benefit anyone.
I dunno…
Earlier: The Most Awkward 2024 Summer Associate Moments… So Far
Joe Patrice is a senior 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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
