Lawyers Evenly Split On How Hard Summer Associates Should Work

Nights and weekends? The community cuts right down the middle.
The post Lawyers Evenly Split On How Hard Summer Associates Should Work appeared first on Above the Law.

A little over a week ago, we chronicled a bulletin board tussle over whether or not it’s appropriate to ask summer associates to work nights and weekends. No one suggested summers put in 100-hour weeks, just that summer associates be allowed on to occasionally take part in the authentic, if unpleasant, after-hours work that they’ll be expected to perform a year (and change) hence.

As someone who got roped into a project at 5:30 p.m. on my first day as a summer that would keep me there helping draft a temporary restraining order until 4 a.m., working late seemed entirely acceptable. It’s not something a firm should do every night, but being treated as a contributing team member on an important task was nice and it helped acclimate me to the upcoming Biglaw journey. After that, I worked one weekend on a project and otherwise had the 9-to-5-to-all-hours-of-the-night-partying summer associateship every expects.

Apparently that’s not how a lot of folks see the experience though.

So we conducted a small poll and its unscientific results reveal a deep schism:

Not the largest sample by any means, but it tends to confirm that the law firm world is in flux right now and the expectation that a summer associate is, in part, there to Beta test their first-year experience has lost a lot of its sway over the industry.

Earlier: Should Law Firms Have Summer Associates Working Nights And Weekends?

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.