The first batch of summer associates are getting here next week, and then I guess we'll be getting another bunch of them a couple of weeks after that. I can't really remember. There are the usual office scrambles in preparation for their arrival. L from human resources stuck her head in my office this afternoon trying to see if I needed my second chair. Yes, I need my second chair. Even if it's covered up with a stack of papers. I'm a sixth year associate, I'm not giving up my second chair just to cover the butts of the recruiting team who didn't bother to count up the right number of chairs for the summer class they've been working on bringing in for the past six months. It's ridiculous. Somehow there's always this sudden realization that we have more or fewer summers than we'd planned offices for and this frantic shuffling around of desks and rearranging of a corner of the library and I wonder, you know, why does it happen every year and why is it always such a scramble? And don't the recruiters know these summers won't know the difference, and won't care?

There's the usual griping by the assistants about who's assigned to support summers and who isn't (and how come they are never told what the deal is going to be until a day or two before the summers arrive) and whether it's fair and whether the summers are guys or girls and whether they're cute and whether they're the smart ones or the dumb ones. (The dumb ones are actually much easier to support than the smart ones, is the word in the assistant pool.) Helen's in the midst of all this so I get the rundown on how these summers act to the staff, which I will occasionally make sure the hiring partner knows, if it's egregious or extra sweet or something. Actually I'm not sure anyone cares except the staff if you're extra sweet to the staff. And actually I'm not sure if the hiring partner cares that much if you're egregiously obnoxious to the staff -- everyone has gotten an offer here for at least the past few summers, I think, unless I'm forgetting someone. But trust me, I know who from the last two or three summer classes Helen and her posse of support staff friends think is a total asshole, and I'll give Helen a wink and call them up if I have an especially boring and nitpicky rush assignment for an especially jerky client. So even though it probably won't affect your offer, it'll affect your life to be a jerk to the staff. I also take no pity, though, on the summers who are insincerely, ass-kissingly, ingratiatingly nice to the staff. That gets you less respect and more abuse from me and Helen and her pals than just being a straightforward asshole.

I didn't go to very many of our recruiting parties this year so I can't remember if there's anyone particularly good looking showing up for the summer. A couple of the tax guys and one of the other corporate junior partners and two of the coolest of the paralegals and take bets on which summer associate a certain estate planning partner is going to end up dirty dancing with at the midsummer party, and which summer associate is going to cause the most gossip, and which one is going to be the one we're most outraged about if they get an offer. And for those of us who are single, which of us will be the first to kiss a summer associate. We have to place our bets in the first week they get here, and it's funny because it's not that easy to predict. But it makes the summer pretty entertaining because we act all friendly and we go out to lunch with them and try to instigate things to make the betting pool go our way.
- posted by Blogger @ 4:59 PM