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

[Anonymous User]

To be fair, my NYC firm has been pretty close to a paid vacation. Only a couple of us in a class of 40 have had to stay ridiculously late or come in on weekends. Otherwise, we get work a 5-year-old could do and are out of the office by 5:30.

This. I'm at a V5 and often get explicit instructions to ignore emails until Monday morning.

Though if I did have to work a late night or a weekend I wouldn't bitch about it, as I'm making more money than I ever have in my entire life.

[Old Gregg]

To be fair, my NYC firm has been pretty close to a paid vacation. Only a couple of us in a class of 40 have had to stay ridiculously late or come in on weekends. Otherwise, we get work a 5-year-old could do and are out of the office by 5:30.

This. I'm at a V5 and often get explicit instructions to ignore emails until Monday morning.

Though if I did have to work a late night or a weekend I wouldn't bitch about it, as I'm making more money than I ever have in my entire life.

Good attitude. FWIW I've avoided giving my summers any night or weekend work at my V10.

[Anonymous User]

In the office right now. Not complaining. I'm the only one here, though, which is a weird feeling. Everyone else on this project took stuff home for the weekend, but I'm infinitely more productive in the office. (Except for my TLS breaks, apparently...)

[Anonymous User]

Are SA events required/ is attendance considered when determining whether to extend an offer? I attend most but sometimes do not for various reasons.

[Anonymous User]

In the office right now. Not complaining. I'm the only one here, though, which is a weird feeling. Everyone else on this project took stuff home for the weekend, but I'm infinitely more productive in the office. (Except for my TLS breaks, apparently...)

Yeah, empty office is weird as hell. But at least at my firm you can wear jeans.

[Anonymous User]

Are SA events required/ is attendance considered when determining whether to extend an offer? I attend most but sometimes do not for various reasons.

Yeah, it's expected that you go to these--it's part of the summer program, and hence, part of your job. Going to events is as important (if not, more important) than work quality. There is one person in my summer class who has skipped a few of these events, and it's been commented by the hiring partner and recruiting committee multiple times. Last year, the person no-offered was one who decided to gun every weekend to work more projects but skipped out on social events.

[ruski]

Are SA events required/ is attendance considered when determining whether to extend an offer? I attend most but sometimes do not for various reasons.

Yeah, it's expected that you go to these--it's part of the summer program, and hence, part of your job. Going to events is as important (if not, more important) than work quality. There is one person in my summer class who has skipped a few of these events, and it's been commented by the hiring partner and recruiting committee multiple times. Last year, the person no-offered was one who decided to gun every weekend to work more projects but skipped out on social events.

my experience was very different. i skipped a bunch of events (maybe went to 2/3s of all events. no one cared. normally i emailed the recruiter and politely explained i was too busy with work. sometimes i just skipped b/c i wanted to be home at a normal hour for once. but we were expressly told that we should not be blowing off work to attend events. you also have to be smart about it. there were a few events that i literally just stayed for 20 min to sign in and have my face shown and then left. my summer class was huge though so it was easy to skip or leave early and not be noticed. this may be different if your summer class is less than 15 people.

[Old Gregg]

Use your judgment. If your summer class is 20 plus, no one will care if you miss a few events, though you should strive to attend a majority.

If your class is smaller, go to all.

The summer program is as much an opportunity to build relationships and network as it is to showcase good work. Gunners underrate the former, but it's critical.

[romothesavior]

This thread gives me a headache. I need to stop reading it.

[monkey85]

there were a few events that i literally just stayed for 20 min to sign in and have my face shown and then left.

Sign in? Wow.

[Anonymous User]

Hard to believe that in a blink of an eye, we’re at the halfway point. A great experience with no complaints, none, I really love the people (smart and humorous) and I especially love the view, ditto direct deposit!

My biggest anxiety was that they would dump three days of work on me and want it completed by the next morning ― never happened.

What I dread is having to go back to class, ug, anyone else feel the same?

[ruski]

there were a few events that i literally just stayed for 20 min to sign in and have my face shown and then left.

Sign in? Wow.

yea i remember two distinct events (probably more but hard to recall) that we had to sign in. and a few others they passed out name cards, so i didn't want my name card to always be the one left over

[Anonymous User]

Received word that there will be no-offers coming in our summer class (big law satellite office). A partner said even though the company line is "We dont take more SAs than we can absorb," they count on at least one SA each summer to be a dud. Unfortunately, he said there were no duds in our class of seven. Good times.

That sucks. I am in a satellite office with a summer class of seven.

What area or region are you?

+1. I'm in a satellite office with only a couple of SAs, but another satellite office in the same state has 7 SAs. Since the two offices tend to have the same hiring philosophy, I would like to know this myself.

[Anonymous User]

Are you guys really complaining about working nights and weekends? For 3,000$ a week? This is called a summer job for a reason. Yes, we try not to "inconvenience" you by giving you work at bad times, but that's really more of a gift from us than an expectation or entitlement you should have. And when you work full time, you can sure as hell expect to work on nights and weekends. Might as well get ready for it now. This isn't a summer vacation.

I'm the poster who mentioned the anecdote of having 200 pages for cross-checked dropped on me at 10:30 p.m.

Perhaps I should've mentioned that the attorney who gave me that ended up not even touching that assignment the next day. Perhaps I should mention that last summer, if you include the (approximately 20) hours I got to mark down for SA meetings/training that we had with recruiting during the course of the summer, I was on track to bill 2600 hours for a full year because of the assignments I happened to get pulled on to throughout the summer (I was in M&A, if you couldn't guess). If you think that's what was normally expected for a SA, you're delusional. For all the chest-puffing that people on here do once they're in biglaw, every junior/mid-level presently in biglaw had cakewalk summers compared to what many firms' c/o 2011/12 SAs had. Numerous partners routinely talked about the absolute joke of an experience people in pre-ITE classes had, but how SAs are now often working as hard, or harder than, many juniors.

My summer was great experience, and I'm really glad I got to see what it was actually like before heading in this fall. I was on a large number of assignments that routinely kept me there after midnight that were perfectly legitimate, but I'd hardly consider myself entitled for finding a 10:30 p.m. cross/grammar/spelling check to be a pretty shitty assignment for an SA when the associate just went home to get a good night's rest. I also find it rather amusing that juniors are so quick to take the hardass line of "If you don't like it, go elsewhere" approach after cushy wining & dining they received during their summers.

[fatduck]

welcome to the world. "everything i've done is easy, everything i'm doing is hard."

[IAFG]

Are you guys really complaining about working nights and weekends? For 3,000$ a week? This is called a summer job for a reason. Yes, we try not to "inconvenience" you by giving you work at bad times, but that's really more of a gift from us than an expectation or entitlement you should have. And when you work full time, you can sure as hell expect to work on nights and weekends. Might as well get ready for it now. This isn't a summer vacation.

I'm the poster who mentioned the anecdote of having 200 pages for cross-checked dropped on me at 10:30 p.m.

Perhaps I should've mentioned that the attorney who gave me that ended up not even touching that assignment the next day. Perhaps I should mention that last summer, if you include the (approximately 20) hours I got to mark down for SA meetings/training that we had with recruiting during the course of the summer, I was on track to bill 2600 hours for a full year because of the assignments I happened to get pulled on to throughout the summer (I was in M&A, if you couldn't guess). If you think that's what was normally expected for a SA, you're delusional. For all the chest-puffing that people on here do once they're in biglaw, every junior/mid-level presently in biglaw had cakewalk summers compared to what many firms' c/o 2011/12 SAs had. Numerous partners routinely talked about the absolute joke of an experience people in pre-ITE classes had, but how SAs are now often working as hard, or harder than, many juniors.

My summer was great experience, and I'm really glad I got to see what it was actually like before heading in this fall. I was on a large number of assignments that routinely kept me there after midnight that were perfectly legitimate, but I'd hardly consider myself entitled for finding a 10:30 p.m. cross/grammar/spelling check to be a pretty shitty assignment for an SA when the associate just went home to get a good night's rest. I also find it rather amusing that juniors are so quick to take the hardass line of "If you don't like it, go elsewhere" approach after cushy wining & dining they received during their summers.

Wouldn't most juniors have had the less-cushy summers of 2009 and 2010? At my firm, our summer is by all accounts much more wine & dine than those years.

[ran12]

Are you guys really complaining about working nights and weekends? For 3,000$ a week? This is called a summer job for a reason. Yes, we try not to "inconvenience" you by giving you work at bad times, but that's really more of a gift from us than an expectation or entitlement you should have. And when you work full time, you can sure as hell expect to work on nights and weekends. Might as well get ready for it now. This isn't a summer vacation.

I'm the poster who mentioned the anecdote of having 200 pages for cross-checked dropped on me at 10:30 p.m.

Perhaps I should've mentioned that the attorney who gave me that ended up not even touching that assignment the next day. Perhaps I should mention that last summer, if you include the (approximately 20) hours I got to mark down for SA meetings/training that we had with recruiting during the course of the summer, I was on track to bill 2600 hours for a full year because of the assignments I happened to get pulled on to throughout the summer (I was in M&A, if you couldn't guess). If you think that's what was normally expected for a SA, you're delusional. For all the chest-puffing that people on here do once they're in biglaw, every junior/mid-level presently in biglaw had cakewalk summers compared to what many firms' c/o 2011/12 SAs had. Numerous partners routinely talked about the absolute joke of an experience people in pre-ITE classes had, but how SAs are now often working as hard, or harder than, many juniors.

My summer was great experience, and I'm really glad I got to see what it was actually like before heading in this fall. I was on a large number of assignments that routinely kept me there after midnight that were perfectly legitimate, but I'd hardly consider myself entitled for finding a 10:30 p.m. cross/grammar/spelling check to be a pretty shitty assignment for an SA when the associate just went home to get a good night's rest. I also find it rather amusing that juniors are so quick to take the hardass line of "If you don't like it, go elsewhere" approach after cushy wining & dining they received during their summers.

I'd gladly put in that kind of time if I got to do M&A

[Anonymous User]

Are SA events required/ is attendance considered when determining whether to extend an offer? I attend most but sometimes do not for various reasons.

Yeah, it's expected that you go to these--it's part of the summer program, and hence, part of your job. Going to events is as important (if not, more important) than work quality. There is one person in my summer class who has skipped a few of these events, and it's been commented by the hiring partner and recruiting committee multiple times. Last year, the person no-offered was one who decided to gun every weekend to work more projects but skipped out on social events.

my experience was very different. i skipped a bunch of events (maybe went to 2/3s of all events. no one cared. normally i emailed the recruiter and politely explained i was too busy with work. sometimes i just skipped b/c i wanted to be home at a normal hour for once. but we were expressly told that we should not be blowing off work to attend events. you also have to be smart about it. there were a few events that i literally just stayed for 20 min to sign in and have my face shown and then left. my summer class was huge though so it was easy to skip or leave early and not be noticed. this may be different if your summer class is less than 15 people.

me: anon you quoted

Fair enough. I guess it depends on the firm and market. My class size is under 10 in a large secondary market. Our assignments are also filtered through the recruiting coordinators, so using work as an excuse usually doesn't go over so well since they purposely control the amount of work you get.

[Old Gregg]

I also find it rather amusing that juniors are so quick to take the hardass line of "If you don't like it, go elsewhere" approach after cushy wining & dining they received during their summers.

Again, any day you leave at 530pm or any weekend you have off should be viewed as a gift, not as something you're entitled to. You just don't seem to get that.

And pretty presumptuous to think that I didn't work my balls off during my summer. And when I did, I didn't have a shitty attitude about it.

Re: Getting assignments that have fake deadlines, it's one side of the story. The associate you're doing the assignment for will need to review your work and edit it before submitting it, so your deadline will come before the real deadline. To add to that, other work often comes in the way, or th deal gets delayed at the last second and the deadlines change. That's just the way it works.

But again, working late for legitimately fake deadlines is truly a shitty deal, and one no one should endure.

[shoeshine]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

[pattonthicke]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

the partner you are working for will research/write the memo himself. He will then take all of 2 minutes to look at your shit and grade you based on how close/off you were to what he came up with.-----you should feel no pressure---no matter what the partner told you, this deal will not depend on the accuracy of your memo.

[fatduck]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

the partner you are working for will research/write the memo himself. He will then take all of 2 minutes to look at your shit and grade you based on how close/off you were to what he came up with.-----you should feel no pressure---no matter what the partner told you, this deal will not depend on the accuracy of your memo.

this is the perfect reply in that it manages to be simultaneously 100% accurate and 100% the opposite of what shoeshine wants to hear

[Old Gregg]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

the partner you are working for will research/write the memo himself. He will then take all of 2 minutes to look at your shit and grade you based on how close/off you were to what he came up with.-----you should feel no pressure---no matter what the partner told you, this deal will not depend on the accuracy of your memo.

this is the perfect reply in that it manages to be simultaneously 100% accurate and 100% the opposite of what shoeshine wants to hear

Yup. Still cute and funny though.

[romothesavior]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

the partner you are working for will research/write the memo himself. He will then take all of 2 minutes to look at your shit and grade you based on how close/off you were to what he came up with.-----you should feel no pressure---no matter what the partner told you, this deal will not depend on the accuracy of your memo.

this is the perfect reply in that it manages to be simultaneously 100% accurate and 100% the opposite of what shoeshine wants to hear

+1. The notion that a partner with a client with billions of dollars on the line (skeptical of this too, btw) would leave important research entirely or even primarily in the hands of a summer associate is kinda lulzy.

That's not to say don't do good work. I'm sure it will be scrutinized, and it may even be helpful to the partner. But its not going to be a game-changer of a memorandum.

[shoeshine]

I am working on a really big case/issue right now. The outcome means billions of dollars to our client. Somehow I have been assigned the research and memorandum that will outline our biggest and best argument in the future case. I assumed there was other associates working on this issue but I found out today that the partner I am working for has only assigned this part to himself because it is so important. We are nowhere near trial but I can't help but feel this is way above my pay grade. I am sure he will double and triple check my work but if we both make a mistake or my crappy reasoning leads him in the wrong direction it could mean a big loss for our client. This is alot of pressure.

Does anyone else feel like this?

the partner you are working for will research/write the memo himself. He will then take all of 2 minutes to look at your shit and grade you based on how close/off you were to what he came up with.-----you should feel no pressure---no matter what the partner told you, this deal will not depend on the accuracy of your memo.

this is the perfect reply in that it manages to be simultaneously 100% accurate and 100% the opposite of what shoeshine wants to hear

Nope this pretty much 100% what I want to hear. I just don't ever want to be the reason any major mistakes are made. I am fine with making mistakes in my memo as long as they are contained and don't go out for other partners or clients to see.