Will Summer Associate Programs Go by the Wayside?

A legal consultant says summer associate programs could be on the way out, spurred by the economic downturn and by firms’ informal analyses showing that lawyers hired from the programs don’t stay much longer than those hired laterally.

Writing for the Legal Intelligencer, Frank Michael D'Amore, founder of Attorney Career Catalysts, cites several reasons for a likely decline or death of summer associate programs.

One reason, in D'Amore's view, is that large law firms will likely begin hiring fewer lawyers right out of law school and more laterals, some of whom will get their experience at smaller and midsize firms. With fewer summer associate hires, the programs will no longer be as important as a recruiting tool. Nor are the programs particularly effective in binding new associates to firms, D’Amore writes.

At the same time, firms are chafing at the expenses of summer associate programs, including salaries that are just as high, on a monthly basis, as those earned by new law grads. “As those first-year salaries are under attack, how can a firm justify paying that same scale for clerks whose time is even less likely to ever be collected from more watchful clients?” D’Amore asks.

“If these programs survive, I expect they will feature smaller classes with far fewer perks—the days of flying summer associates across the country and oceans and battling to offer the coolest and most expensive events, will only repel clients,” D’Amore writes. “There will always be maverick firms that will go overboard, especially if the salad days return, but my belief is that there will be a paradigm shift in this realm, as sad as that is for me to acknowledge.”

D'Amore makes his dim assessment for summer associate programs at the same time that a National Law Journal article predicts that law firms will be curtailing parties and perks for summer associates, at least for this summer. "You can't justify taking kids on a wine-tasting trip when you are laying off attorneys," Altman Weil principal Thomas Clay told the NLJ.

D’Amore's prognostications aren't limited to summer associate programs. He also predicts that the recession will lead to more skills-based education at law schools, lower first-year associate salaries, and greater hiring opportunities for small and medium-size law firms.