Transcript
"As summer approaches, I was curious as to what a typical big law summer experience is like. Most are virtual, I was wondering what logistics/culture was standard in a biglaw summer experience?"This is a good question. There's a article I wrote on law crossing called, The Guide to Being a Summer Associate. It's a long article. Let me just tell you what I've noticed in my career about summer associate jobs.
The most important thing with summer associate jobs are to show the firm that they can make money off you. So let me just, basically to show the law firm that in the long run, they'll be able to make money off you. So let me just show you how, what the kind of the questions that they're gonna ask. What they're looking for.
The only people that I've seen not get offers in summer associates are people that do the following. They have a sense of entitlement. So when I was when I was a summer associate, it was interesting cause the economy was very bad. Then one guy ordered the most expensive meals, with no offer. Another guy took a car home every night, no offer. Back then the firm spent a lot of money for cars. Other people did not bill a lot. When I was clerking, another guy got drunk, and then other people are not thorough.
All this stuff is fixable. Basically, you have to act extremely appropriately in your summer associate. I guess is virtual, but you have to just treat every one with massive deference, otherwise you're going to upset people. You cannot spend a lot of the firm's money not because you can't, just because they won't like it and it will make you look stupid. So you need to be careful with that.
Getting loaded and acting out socially is really huge. And that's something that every year at every firm, there's people that usually don't get offers that do that. And then law firms that do not give everyone offers, wanna see who's going to work the hardest.
You need to really bill a lot of hours - as many as you can, within reason. You don't need to kill yourself, but if you're like in the top, 15 or 20% of billers, you'll probably definitely get an offer. That's the thing that they're most concerned about. And then other people are not thorough, which means, use Grammarly and other things and double check your work. Most new attorneys are not familiar with doing that, but you need to do the best work you're capable of. And then you also need to ask senior associates and others for guidance. Even mid-level associates for guidance, can ask any questions about what to do. And they do not expect you to be perfect right away, but those are good things to do. And then no sense of entitlement. This is not your opportunity to get rewarded for doing well in college and going to a good law school, this is your opportunity to show people that you can go to the next step.
And these are the things you need to do to go to the next step. And then the only other thing is no gossip. You should assume all emails are read. Not that will happen, but I just assume that will happen, and then the only other thing would be no personal relationships or no romantic. Which is difficult for people to not do but, that would be my advice. It's not gonna prevent you from getting an offer, but it could definitely hurt you. Whatever you do no inappropriate texts or anything like that with staff and so forth, because people will use that against you and be very excited to do that. I don't mean that in a negative way against them, it's just, you don't wanna give people anything to use against you.
So those are the big things that I would say, and that kind of goes for work in any firm, but those are the big mistakes that I've seen people make as summer associates.