QContinuum wrote:Anonymous User wrote:It was all fake. They'll make you think it's real, but trust me, it's fake or unnecessary marketing-type work (except pro bono assignments - those are real).
Are you serious? At what firm do seniors have the time/energy/interest to craft an elaborate Potemkin village of fake work disguised as real client work in order to make summers feel important? And how does the truth not leak out - there have got to be summers who are friends with current associates at the firm.
Anon from above. Not kidding at all. By "fake" I mean work that has already been done before, as other posters have mentioned. E.g., research that a junior associate has already done and knows the answer to, diligence that has already been done, etc. This is actually a time-saving measure because no one wants to pore over shitty summer associate work to fix all the mistakes. Summers take forever to do anything (partially due to lack of experience and knowledge, but mostly because they have so many summer events and trainings to attend) and no client has days and days to wait for a work product. So it's easier to give summers fake work and check it against the real work product that was already completed sometime before the summer associates arrived. That way the summers get a "real" work experience (in that it once was a real assignment) and no one has to risk relying on a summer associate to finish the assignment correctly and in a timely manner.
I think most V50 firms feel that the networking that gets done during your summer is far more important than anything you may learn, substance-wise, so most encourage attending the summer trainings and events over attempting to actually do real, time-sensitive work.
When I was a summer, I thought maybe 50% of my work was real and 50% was fake. When I came back as a first year, I realized it was all fake and I had a good laugh with the associates who had given me that fake work. When it was my turn to give assignments to summer associates, I quickly realized how annoying it would be to give them actual work, so I too gave them fake work. Also partners would never let a summer associate show up on a client bill (imagine how outraged the client would be), so anything they did would be written off anyway or charged to a non-billable number. Easier all around to just give fake work.
Anyway it's totally fine to take a few days off. It's highly likely no one will notice, and it's you definitely WILL NOT miss out on on a full-time job offer for missing 2-3 days. No firm would ruin their offer rate for such an inconsequential thing. The firm has real first years to do their closings or whatever. You will 100% not be essential, in any way, to any deal you may be "staffed" on.