Will some summers take Q's on Work Life Balance at V40 firms Forum

[09042014]

I'm curious. Any summers around?

[thirtyandseven]

Lifestyle firms, or Quinn?

[WHJTMG178]

Sure.

[09042014]

How many times a week do your associates get a nice fancy lunch for free?

[OneMoreLawHopeful]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

[WHJTMG178]

How many times a week do your associates get a nice fancy lunch for free?

Seems like associates were going to nice lunches everyday lol. They worked hard when things were busy, and sometime stayed late. When things were a little slower, they would go home earlier. A lot of associates talked sports, music, and movies, which makes me think they have pretty active lives outside the office.

[JusticeHarlan]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

I mean, I totally get why you'd think that. But you'd be surprised.

[09042014]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

I mean, I totally get why you'd think that. But you'd be surprised.

I was pretty jaded about big law even during my SA, but I was surprised too. Summers are lied to all summer long. Recruiting keeps you away from people who don't "best rep" the firm, busy people aren't going to take off at 5pm to go to a cooking class with you. Hell even I lie to summers for some reason. Its weird.

[OneMoreLawHopeful]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

I mean, I totally get why you'd think that. But you'd be surprised.

I was pretty jaded about big law even during my SA, but I was surprised too. Summers are lied to all summer long. Recruiting keeps you away from people who don't "best rep" the firm, busy people aren't going to take off at 5pm to go to a cooking class with you. Hell even I lie to summers for some reason. Its weird.

When I was an SA is was pretty obvious what was going on (maybe different firms are different, I don't know?). I mean, all you had to do was look at when documents were getting checked in/out on the document management software and it was pretty clear what "normal hours" looked like; let alone the email chains where the first email was an assignment initiated by a partner at 11:30pm on a Tuesday.

I guess it just seems like there's usually so much going on w/ respect to actual workloads that I don't know how you're going to hide it. Maybe some firms do go to outrageous lengths, but that wasn't my experience. If it happens elsewhere, my bad for doubting.

[JusticeHarlan]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

I mean, I totally get why you'd think that. But you'd be surprised.

I was pretty jaded about big law even during my SA, but I was surprised too. Summers are lied to all summer long. Recruiting keeps you away from people who don't "best rep" the firm, busy people aren't going to take off at 5pm to go to a cooking class with you. Hell even I lie to summers for some reason. Its weird.

Even beyond the lying (which is shockingly natural), summers just don't get exposed to the worst of it for pretty natural reasons. If my deal has a crazy/stressful fire drill going on, I'm not going to loop in the summer - there's no way it would save me precious time to explain/check what they'd be doing over just handling it myself. I'll let them know what went down the next time we talk, but at that point it's a funny story and not something that ruined my night/weekend and turned more than a few of my hairs grey.

[WHJTMG178]

This is egregious trolling.

Like I get the hate for summers that say "During my SA I never had to stay past 5, so my v26 is great for work-life balance!" But at the same time, over a period of 10 weeks it's relatively easy to observe actual associates and get an idea about what the office culture actually looks like. It's pretty silly to imply that someone can work in an office for over 2 months and still have no basis for drawing fairly accurate conclusions about what actually goes on there.

I mean, I totally get why you'd think that. But you'd be surprised.

I was pretty jaded about big law even during my SA, but I was surprised too. Summers are lied to all summer long. Recruiting keeps you away from people who don't "best rep" the firm, busy people aren't going to take off at 5pm to go to a cooking class with you. Hell even I lie to summers for some reason. Its weird.

When I was an SA is was pretty obvious what was going on (maybe different firms are different, I don't know?). I mean, all you had to do was look at when documents were getting checked in/out on the document management software and it was pretty clear what "normal hours" looked like; let alone the email chains where the first email was an assignment initiated by a partner at 11:30pm on a Tuesday.




I guess it just seems like there's usually so much going on w/ respect to actual workloads that I don't know how you're going to hide it. Maybe some firms do go to outrageous lengths, but that wasn't my experience. If it happens elsewhere, my bad for doubting.

I think we can see the hours people are working, but between lunches, events, and only working with nice people who have patience for summers, it is hard for me to say what life at a firm is really like. Had to work hard, but it is easy to tell that they want the experience to be fun and happy, and I am sure the real deal is not like this.

[09042014]

I'm not sure you can see the hours people are working because 1) you usually aren't in teh office late and 2) a lot of work happens at home on your laptop or citrix.

[WHJTMG178]

I'm not sure you can see the hours people are working because 1) you usually aren't in teh office late and 2) a lot of work happens at home on your laptop or citrix.

This is true, and I am really basing my knowledge on email chains and when docs were being sent around. The work at home thing seems to be really common, so it is hard to tell because most people probably work late from home. The associates I spoke to were pretty forthcoming about their hours, and while it sounded like they were intense, they very well could have been sugar coating. Either way, I know I was shielded from the super stressful both because I wouldn't add value and I was being recruited. I've read what biglaw associates wrote about their jobs on this site, so I definitely appreciated it. I think my biggest take away from the summer is a practice group interest and meeting some of the friendlier people with similar interests and hobbies.

[Neal Patrick Harris]

The lunch q is dumb bc it usually just means people are staying later to compensate.

[WHJTMG178]

The lunch q is dumb bc it usually just means people are staying later to compensate.

I think he was joking.

[dixiecupdrinking]

When I was a summer I thought I had some sense of this stuff but I was pretty far off. You just can't tell. The other thing is that work can get slow in the summer so even if you do get a sense for how the office runs, it's not representative.

[mephistopheles]

i worked a metric fuckton as a summer. 65 hours a week in the office on avg with ~45 billed, easy.

[banjo]

Why am I being recruited when I'm totally fungible and have zero bargaining power? This whole model makes no sense.

[Anonymous User]

Sitting still all day and drinking all night is taxing. The work as a summer isn't very difficult, but the preparations (knowing all emails may be read by recruiting, formatting, etc.) can make it challenging. Even the simplest assignment becomes time consuming because you find yourself proof reading a "my weekend was great, how was yours email". It's a lot of fun but the whole "12 week interview" thing is grueling. It's hard to have a work life balance during the week because going out with associates, summers and social events take priority over second date with some person. Also, like law school unfounded hype accounts for 90 percent of the stress.

[sideroxylon]

i worked a metric fuckton as a summer. 65 hours a week in the office on avg with ~45 billed, easy.

I can't tell if this is a joke or serious—tons of folks will work way more than this, so "metric fuckton" seems odd to me.