These 4 types of summer associates may get no offers
It’s now the season for summer associates to show their skills and personalities in an effort to get a permanent job offer from their law firms.
Above the Law offers some reassurances—nearly all will get job offers. But the blog also has some words of warning in a post about the four types of summer associates who fail to receive offers. Those four types are:
• The summer associate lacking boundaries. This person, often a committed drinker, tells full-time associates to “lighten up” and not to worry about deadlines. This is “the type of summer associate who feels the need to help get the party started. Unfortunately, no one has told her that there is no party to start,” Above the Law says.
• The summer associate who mistakes a law firm for a frat. “This guy, often a former athlete, is the type of summer associate who prides himself on being on the inside,” the blog says. “Unfortunately, no has told this guy that, unlike the cachet of being a member of Delta Sigma Whatever, no one at his current firm wears the firm pin with pride. No one skips work to take in 18 holes. There is no us versus them. This is just work.”
• The car salesman. This summer associate, in an effort to sell himself or herself, “will use social functions, trips to the copy center and attorney development meetings as a venue to ingratiate himself and to argue his case.”
• The wet blanket. These summer associates “often assume that a serious demeanor, in dress and attitude, is the safest bet. However, attorneys are people. Attorneys like bad television, bright colors, and pop music, and on occasion they laugh. You do not need to pretend that you are a robot who eat and sleeps the law.”
