ITT: Summer Associates Post About Their Anxiety (2012) Forum

[traehekat]

Genuine alarm problems with my phone (it acts up), late to work and missed a speaker. Is this the end of the road for me, i.e. solid grounds for no-offer and significant reason to start gearing up for 3L OCI? FML. Aside from the all-consuming feeling of impending doom that has been cast upon me as result of this unfortunate incident, summer has been pretty great.

Standard advice, I know, but worrying about it will only make you feel worse and worse. Forget about it, enjoy the rest of the summer, and do good work. It's not the end of the road by any means.

[Lawyerhead]

My firm is awesome too. I like all of the summers, but this one fat white chick at my NYC firm is driving me insane. She asks stupid, unnecessary questions when we have been staffed together on projects to show the attorneys how engaged she is, and constantly sends condescending updates to the attorneys like "(me) and I talked about X, just so you know" and other pointless updates to show how proactive she is being. I refuse to inundate attorneys with this garbage. I just do my work correctly and turn it in. She also takes less work on purposefully so she can turn in "better" quality work relative to the other summers. Sides that she is nice though.

Taking on less work so you can do better work is a great idea. Do you think firms, partners and associates judge summers on how many hours they bill? If a summer gave me very bad work product, I'd probably never work with them again if given a choice. Also, sending updates and being proactive is a good thing... Nothing worse than giving someone an assignment, radio silence from them for 2 weeks, and then finding out that the person is way off track.

[3ThrowAway99]

edit: sorry guys. Ignore my comments. Rough night and I took it out here--my apologies.

[rad lulz]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

Srsly bro?

[rad lulz]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

Also why shouldn't people be stressed about possibly fucking up a post-grad offer ITE

[3ThrowAway99]

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[englawyer]

Look brohan I just got one of those things. Whether this affirmative defense applied. Literally nothing on point, no case on point or answers out there in any jx. So I found some law that could sorta apply and made arguments by analogy. $5 says there's really something out there, you're just not looking hard enough.

Agree with the argument by analogy thing, but disagree about the "there's really something out there." Sometimes there just isn't. I've been told that by multiple partners/associates; summer research projects are often rabbit chases down holes with no answers.

But like rad said, best you can do is find something similar that might be capable of producing a coherent legal argument. Don't just email the partner and be like, "Sorry bro, I got nothin." Tell them you looked, tell them your research strategy, tell them you found nothing directly on point (most times they won't be surprised... they often know there isn't much), and then tell them about anything relevant that might help them craft an argument. That's what my mentor told me to do in these situations, and it worked for me.

Basically the bold is what I mean by "something." I can't ever think of a situation where there is nothing even remotely relevant to say.

agree here. the way i deal with these wild goose chases is to simply imagine that i was the lead attorney that had to write a brief in response to some motion adverse to your client. in that situation, you would not just say "oh, i guess you win because there is no case on point." you would come up with some kind of reasoning by analogy, policy, or SOMETHING. i then just explain that there wasn't much on point but X,Y,Z are at least plausible arguments.

[keg411]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

No one is really complaining. It's more that people are worried about fucking up. Chill. You saw the title of the thread and you decided to read it anyway.

[Ludo!]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

You don't have to read it

[bk1]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

You seem upset in every single thread you post in. If you want humblebrag, I suggest reading all of shoeshine's posts.

[Anonymous User]

Absolutely bombed my first assignment. I thought I was just having a progress report with the junior attorney, but it got sent to the senior attorney and it was pretty rough (yes I know my fault for sending to junior attorney in "rough" draft format).

Got feedback from the senior and let's just say it was pretty bad...I still have 7 weeks lefts but feeling really paranoid and worried right now

[rad lulz]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

Also why shouldn't people be stressed about possibly fucking up a post-grad offer ITE

Yes srsly Rad... I know you are one of the 1/3ish or so of Vandy students who have a fucking cushy SA, but there's really not that much you can do to fuck up the position in most cases, and if you got it in the first place it was at least semi-random in any case (unless you were destined to be first in the class if Vandy actually ranked)... Srsly, this thread either a) doesn't register with the vast majority of law students out there or b) comes across as a subtle, whiny brag (IMHO).

A few things:

1) Not all firms have 100% offer rates.

2) Not sure whether the semi-randomness inherent in OCI is a reason to not stress at least somewhat about the possible permanent offer.

3) In response to Keg and Ludo: As someone who responds to shit threads all the time to poast the equivalent of "this is a shit thread," I understand the desire to poast.

4) This thread registers with a substantial minority of law students, and an even more substantial minority of TLSers, who tend to self-select towards top schools (better chance at a SA).

5) This post was actually sorta what I needed to hear. I think I have been stressing pretty hard, to my detriment.

[rad lulz]

Absolutely bombed my first assignment. I thought I was just having a progress report with the junior attorney, but it got sent to the senior attorney and it was pretty rough (yes I know my fault for sending to junior attorney in "rough" draft format).

Got feedback from the senior and let's just say it was pretty bad...I still have 7 weeks lefts but feeling really paranoid and worried right now

How was this your first assignment? When did you start?

[BeenDidThat]

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[IAFG]

-_- If this thread is a humblebrag, the entire site suffers from the same defect.

[3ThrowAway99]

fuck you all.. srsly.. if you have an SA you should be shitting with gratitude not anxiety.... Srsly, such a subtle brag thread. I have a memo due each fucking day and I'm not complaining. And I'm a 'clerk' not an SA. I.E. I will be looking for a job like the very few of you who will not get an offer 'cause you didn't do your fing nails right for the summer or didn't kiss enough ass.

Also why shouldn't people be stressed about possibly fucking up a post-grad offer ITE

Yes srsly Rad... I know you are one of the 1/3ish or so of Vandy students who have a fucking cushy SA, but there's really not that much you can do to fuck up the position in most cases, and if you got it in the first place it was at least semi-random in any case (unless you were destined to be first in the class if Vandy actually ranked)... Srsly, this thread either a) doesn't register with the vast majority of law students out there or b) comes across as a subtle, whiny brag (IMHO).

A few things:

1) Not all firms have 100% offer rates.

2) Not sure whether the semi-randomness inherent in OCI is a reason to not stress at least somewhat about the possible permanent offer.

3) In response to Keg and Ludo: As someone who responds to shit threads all the time to poast the equivalent of "this is a shit thread," I understand the desire to poast.

4) This thread registers with a substantial minority of law students, and an even more substantial minority of TLSers, who tend to self-select towards top schools (better chance at a SA).

5) This post was actually sorta what I needed to hear. I think I have been stressing pretty hard, to my detriment.

My apologies guys--rough night, took it out on TLS. Normally don't have that attitude toward this thread.

[3ThrowAway99]

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[Stanford4Me]

Absolutely bombed my first assignment. I thought I was just having a progress report with the junior attorney, but it got sent to the senior attorney and it was pretty rough (yes I know my fault for sending to junior attorney in "rough" draft format).

Got feedback from the senior and let's just say it was pretty bad...I still have 7 weeks lefts but feeling really paranoid and worried right now

I had a similar experience about two weeks ago. I just put it past me, took the project back and knocked it out of the park on my revisions. Now I'm getting work from two senior partners, and I'm going to do the same with them.

I spent a good two days stressing and worrying after my initial mistake, but I realized that doing so wasn't going to help me perform well. It took a lot of mental motivation and constant reminders, but I forced myself to get over it and get back to work. As the cliche goes, everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is how you bounce back from those mistakes.

PM me if you like, I've got some details that make my experience even more stressful.

[Anonymous User]

My firm said on day one that they have the room and they intend to invite everyone back. I think that reassurance ensures a great summer for everyone.

[Anonymous User]

Is anyone using Westlaw live help to find cases? What do you guys think about doing that opposed to your own searches. Seems like they can do a better search in a lot less time.

[Broseidon]

Is anyone using Westlaw live help to find cases? What do you guys think about doing that opposed to your own searches. Seems like they can do a better search in a lot less time.

Not a terrible idea, and I wish I had that option. My firm uses Lexis exclusively, which sucks because I didn't use Lexis once in LRW.

[Anonymous User]

Mid-summer reviews already coming up. Partner today asked me to fill out my review. The review of me, by him. I get to fill it out.

[Lawyerhead]

Mid-summer reviews already coming up. Partner today asked me to fill out my review. The review of me, by him. I get to fill it out.

Now you understand how important these reviews are

[romothesavior]

My review is coming up too. Feel like I've been fitting in well and doing good work, and the attorneys have received me well and have given positive feedback. Still can't help but feel a bit nervous though.

[fl0w]

mine is next week too. we are actually supposed to get formal feedback on every project we do (like written feedback). So I guess I have to pester someone about that.