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This past summer (1L summer) I worked for a firm abroad. A lot of our work involved collaboration with a branch office (LA) for a fairly large firm in the U.S.

I currently have a callback with this same firm for another branch office (East Coast) and was wondering if I should call my summer employer and ask him to put in a good word? Given that this is fairly large firm with 500+ attorneys and multiple offices, would it be helpful at all? I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt, but in the possibility that the firm I'm interviewing with could view it as being desperate makes me hesitant to do so.

I vote why not.

I also think why not. As long as your former employer is happy to do it and isn't someone that other people hate, it might not help, but probably wouldn't hurt. And who knows, it might actually do something.

I'd imagine your U.S. firm already knows, considering your 1L summer firm is probably on your resume--and I'm guessing your 1L experience is going to be brought up at some point during the callback. My feeling is that this is something that would GET you a screener/callback and wouldn't help quite as much to get you an offer, but OTOH, I don't see how it can hurt you--so sure!

I think a way to get it to seem less desperate is to have the person write it like you mentioned interviewing there and they just decided to send in a good word for you. I did this, though it was more that my old boss was great and wrote it like this instead of it being deliberate on my part, but looking at it now, it was a better way to send it.

Might work, might not, but it seems like it most likely won't hurt.