Anonymous Lawyer

I'm preparing for a "halftime" meeting the summer program committee is having this afternoon to discuss what's gone right, what's gone wrong, and things we can do better for the rest of the summer, or things we should change for next year. What frustrates me about the summer program is the unwillingness to think outside the box -- not that this is something lawyers are good at generally. We approach it with a fear of our competitor firms instead of wanting to somehow distinguish ourselves and go outside of the traditional mold. We're all relatively interchangeable -- even if in fact we're not, at least to the law students who apply, we are. We all offer high-level work in a set of similar practice areas, working with similar clients. The business models may differ a bit -- more horizontal or more vertical structure, more versus less individual attorney specialization versus general practice -- but there aren't things that summer associates look at, or have the experience to be able to evaluate anyway. And our summer programs all look exactly the same -- a little bit of low-level legal work, an attempt to help them understand the business, meet the people, get a sense of the culture and lifestyle, lots of good food, lots of fun events, a lot more like summer camp than a job, and the same salary. I believe it is very close to a crapshoot that determines which students we end up with and which ones the firms down the street get. To a small degree it's whether we send out good people who click with the right students. To perhaps a marginally greater degree it's how big our presence on campus is, what the buzz from recent graduates is, what kind of events we hold to get our name out there... but there's really nothing we legitimately can tell students that makes them see that a summer here is substantially different from a summer anywhere else. And because of this, we end up with the same pool of students as our competitor firms, we all have to be about as selective if we want classes of about the same size, and the students make choices, and we get a class interchangeable with the classes down the street.

I want to change this. I want us to have a better class. Not a better class of summers, necessarily -- the summers, during the summer, are a loss to us. The work they provide is marginal; the cost is huge. But I want a better first year class of incoming associates. One way we could do this is change the culture where pretty much everyone comes in and, as a default, will get an offer at the end of the summer to come back. There are definitely people, at the end of the summer, who I'd rather not give an offer to -- not because they're incompetent or evil, but just because I'd rather they work somewhere else, don't feel like they're a great fit here, don't think it's going to work out. But if we did that, no one would come here for the summer -- they would go to our competitors, because no one wants to finish the summer without an offer. It's really hard to go back and reinterview as a 3L without an offer and get a job; you're damaged goods. We rarely look at anyone like that. None of our competitors do much either. So we'd lose a lot of potentially great lawyers, afraid of the risk of not getting an offer. Because lawyers are risk-averse generally anyway, even if they have no good reason to be and would come through the summer with flying colors. So we can't do that.

What frustrates me is that I want our firm to be in a position to be more selective than our competitors and really get to pick and choose our new associates. But right now we're just one of many, and the work we do, while we think it's among the best in our peer group, there's no compelling way to prove that or communicate it, or make it something attractive to law students. But I've come with some radical thoughts for how we could change the whole program to draw the best students to us. Here's my reasoning:

1. The summer associate program costs a lot of money and we get very little in return as far as usable work product, especially compared to the cost.

2. Summer associates consistently tell us that they like our summer program, and that it gives them a good sense of what life is like at the firm -- but that by 2 or 3 weeks in, they understand it. If the goal is to give them a taste, a few weeks may be enough.

3. So my proposal: we cut the summer program down from 10-13 weeks to 4 weeks -- and make those 4 weeks perhaps slightly more intense, with an eye toward showing summers everything they see in 13 weeks, but over a compressed period -- making projects shorter, rotations shorter, more compressed schedule of events, etc. But -- and here's the kicker -- we pay them for perhaps a 10-week summer. Because salary, while it's a huge cost of the program, isn't the only cost -- and we'd save weeks of lunches, events, transportation -- and the man-hours of trying to find assignments for the summers and deal with their presence here. With a few caveats -- if a summer really wants to stay longer, and in the 4 weeks here finds a project he/she can be useful on and the lawyers want him/her to stay, that can be done -- no expectation of it, and no pressure. And -- they sign a contract that prohibits them from spending the rest of the summer at another firm. That wouldn't be fair. But let them spend the other weeks doing whatever they want -- on vacation, writing a book, anything that they won't get a chance to do once they start their lives as lawyers. We don't lose anything by letting them do this -- the amount they gain by being here is not tremendous beyond those four weeks. And this way we're really offering quite a benefit over the other programs -- 6 paid weeks of freedom. We'd get more applicants -- better applicants -- and get to be more selective in our hiring, benefitting the firm in the long run to, I believe, significant extent. I realize this is a radical plan, and there'd probably be some backlash in the media -- paying law students not to work? -- but I don't think it's as silly as it sounds.