Beyond The Offer — Elements of A Productive Summer
A student can and must evaluate the fit between themselves
and the profession. Too often the summer zips by in a fog of assignments,
reviews, baseball games, dinners at partners’ homes, and cocktail parties.
You are making a very
important decision. The law firm is not your fiduciary and your parents cannot
make this choice for you. There is no automatic next or right step. Only you
can decide about fit, temperament, tempo, and style of practice. At the end of
the summer, the law student is likely to have a fairly enthusiastic feeling
about the experience but only a fuzzy understanding of the core issues about
what is an important career decision.
An Offer Is Just The beginning
Succeeding in a
summer program means more than receiving an offer of employment. While
receiving an offer is probably the most important objective of a summer
program, you have many more responsibilities. First is to understand the fit
between you and the firm, you and a practice area, you and the city, and you
and the profession. That you are able to receive an offer of employment does
not validate the wisdom of your choice.
Far too many lawyers
stumble through their first career choices and assume that an offer from the
ABC firm suggests that this is the right long term career choice. Three years
later they wonder why they made that choice and realize that their choice of
firm, practice area and cities were a mistake.
You must be an active
participant in shaping your career. This requires you to look outward to the
firm and inward at yourself. It requires you to avoid the lemming-like behavior
of many of your students who chase an offer without understanding the
relationship between this summer and your career.
Begin with active
observation and involvement in the firm you have chosen. Attend department
meetings, CLE programs, and any other opportunity you can find to see lawyers
in action. This will allow you to understand whether what lawyers really do
excites or satisfies you. Learn as much as you can about your firm. Read the
firm newsletters, brochures, and puff pieces. Pay attention to media reports
Apply lawyerly skepticism without becoming a martini-swilling cynic about law
and life.
Read the legal and business media that relate to your firm,
its practice, and your city. For most lawyers that means you must read your
local business and legal newspapers and the New
York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and leading monthly or weekly legal
media such as the National Law Journal,
American Lawyer, and Legal Times.
Visit the news websites of the leading print and broadcast media and subscribe
to their various news services. A lawyer with an active approach to career
choices immerses herself in all the information one can readily find to provide
a basis for a decision.
Choosing A City
For many students the second summer is one where an
important geographic choice has to be made. You may be following a person with
whom you are involved. You may have decided to experiment and look at a city
before making a firm decision to come home.
If there is a
geographic choice to be made, your summer will be busy. Certainly the firm will
do its best to send to you restaurants, baseball games, dinners at lawyers’
homes and many other social distractions. They will show you the best the city
has to offer. Whether the issue is neighborhoods, schools, real estate values,
cultural activities — take the time to find and participate in what is
important to you. Do not be bashful about seeking advice from young associates
about what’s important to you.
Choosing a Practice Area
Many students enter a summer undecided about where they
will concentrate their practice. Most firms will rotate you through a group of
departments or at least give you a variety of assignments. This will give you a
glimpse of life in these areas. It will not answer the question about how an
area fits. The burden is on you to participate, observe, and absorb as you go
through the summer.
You may discover that you do not have the hunger for the rough and
tumble nature of litigation but that you enjoying the complex problem solving
and drafting skills required by some areas of transactional work. You may see
that the pace of practice in certain areas does not match your metabolism. Do
not be afraid to listen to your own inner reactions. You are far better off
making that assessment today rather than postponing it until you’ve lived 5-15
years of your adult life functioning but doing so unhappily.
Your associate
advisors and other lawyers you meet can be quite helpful in letting you know
more about the day to day reality of a lawyer’s practice Informal conversation
sin the hallway, in the evening, or at lunches not arranged by the firm can
give you enormous insight into what really goes on in litigation or how deals
or negotiated. etc. Do not put your choice on auto pilot.
As a now retired
litigator I was baffled by law students who viewed litigation as the “C>:”
prompt of the legal profession. If you do not like corporate and cannot
understand tax, well let’s go litigate. Then after a couple of years these
lawyers walk from courthouses battered and bruised by an activity they do not
like and they do not understand
Just because a
practice area is trendy or hot does not mean that it will work as a long term
career choice for you. Similarly, do not rush to corporate just because the
market is hot. If you are not making a conscious informed choice about your
summer, you are making a serious mistake. I’m
reminded of the student I met from a major national law school in the late
1980's who said he wanted to do “international environmental bankruptcy.” I
never figured out what that meant, but I’ve got a call into Al Gore’s staff.
Next Week – If The Firm Says ‘No Offer’