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I'm curious if anyone has any experience with this, or knows anyone who does.
Has anyone who worked as a summer associate for a firm in X location (let's say it's the person's hometown and he specifically was playing that up and gunning for it), but then been able to get hired as an associate in firm's Y location (which let's say he had no connection to but just really likes)? How would someone go about saying, thank you very much for the offer at firm X and I accept, but could I catully work at Y instead?

1) At some firms it's very doable. I believe I have heard Jones Day tossed around as such a firm.

2) At other firms it would be impossible and potentially harmful to even ask. Your summer is about fitting in at the office you selected, offices have VASTLY different hiring criteria (Random Firm's LA office might hire median out of your school while Random Firm's DC office might not look at you with less than top 10%), and they use their summer program to try and gauge needs at particular offices and practice areas so having everyone shuffle around would be problematic to say the least.

3) Others are in-between, or might let you split the summer between different offices.

disco_barred wrote:1) At some firms it's very doable. I believe I have heard Jones Day tossed around as such a firm.

2) At other firms it would be impossible and potentially harmful to even ask. Your summer is about fitting in at the office you selected, offices have VASTLY different hiring criteria (Random Firm's LA office might hire median out of your school while Random Firm's DC office might not look at you with less than top 10%), and they use their summer program to try and gauge needs at particular offices and practice areas so having everyone shuffle around would be problematic to say the least.

3) Others are in-between, or might let you split the summer between different offices.

I figured different firms have different philosophies behind it. Any tips on how to discretely find out what a particular firm's position on it is?

vanburen81 wrote:

disco_barred wrote:1) At some firms it's very doable. I believe I have heard Jones Day tossed around as such a firm.

2) At other firms it would be impossible and potentially harmful to even ask. Your summer is about fitting in at the office you selected, offices have VASTLY different hiring criteria (Random Firm's LA office might hire median out of your school while Random Firm's DC office might not look at you with less than top 10%), and they use their summer program to try and gauge needs at particular offices and practice areas so having everyone shuffle around would be problematic to say the least.

3) Others are in-between, or might let you split the summer between different offices.

I figured different firms have different philosophies behind it. Any tips on how to discretely find out what a particular firm's position on it is?

Ask during your interview? It's not a great question in so much as it might play your hand with respect to your commitment to a given practice area or region, but I really don't know what else you can do. Contact firm alums, ask around, browse websites for official policies, etc.

Yeah, I don't really want to ask at interview. Anyone else have experience with something like this?

It's going to be firm-by-firm, so if you don't want to ask during the interview, you're going to have to find some other time/place to ask someone who knows about that specific firm.