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The Summer: Learning to Build Your Career or Learning to Drink?

By Dan Slater (index)

O Loyal Summer Associate readers, where are you? What can you say of your experience? What have you learned thus far?

Did you successfully court the practice group in which you’d like to work? Did the group court you? Did social events foster or frustrate the relationships you wished to forge? (A lot of questions here, Law Blog!)

We ask because we want to know. But also because Lauren Stiller Rikleen — author of “Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law” and partner in the Massachusetts law firm Bowditch & Dewey — suggests that, beneath rich salaries, “interesting research” and opportunities to “observe skilled attorneys at work,” lies “a pattern of behavior that places law firms at risk.” Click here for Rikleen’s essay in the NLJ.

“The firms create an experience that is beyond the norm,” one student told Rikleen. “Everything is free. The atmosphere is higher class than anything we are used to, and the pressure to attend every event, including the after-parties, is significant.” Another described similar frustrations with his summer at a premier firm: “The competition among practice groups to sponsor the best event was intense — fancy dinners, days at the beach, country clubs — all followed by late-night partying where the summers and associates drink freely.”

The rules, explains Rikleen (pictured), are never explained, but known to all: The more summers attending the post-event gathering, the easier it is to justify presenting the high bar tab to the firm for reimbursement. (We did not know this.) “The next day,” she writes, “the summers and other associates swap stories that demonstrate their drinking prowess. But it is not only the drinking that is troubling. Summer associates report an atmosphere that seems to condone inappropriate comments and sexual overtures. Consider, for example, the married partner with children who was overheard at one event asking a young woman what her dating age range was.”

Rikleen (pictured) also implies a conspiracy — “a quiet bargain” — between law firm and law schools “whereby summer associates who meet minimal performance standards will be offered an associate position, leading the way for firms to be welcomed back to the law school for the next recruitment season.”

What are the perceived solutions to Rikleen’s perceived problems? Develop clear rules for personal conduct and communicate them not only to the summers but to associates and partners. Cut off funding for the “after-event partying.” Transfer that funding “to programs providing the creative training and mentoring that students do not typically receive in law school.”

LB readers, what do you think? Are these programs really as risky as Rikleen makes them seem?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).