Do’s and Don’t’s of a Summer Job

[GoatDuck]

I haven’t found any threads discussing the do’s and don’t’s of working at a firm as a summer student. Summer students want to navigate the unfamiliar territory well so they get valuable experience but also don’t cry every evening. 

E.g. I’ve heard stories of people billing 60-65 hours some weeks as a summer student. I imagine it’s not a universal expectation that summer students bill this many hours per week, but without guidance students may feel the pressure to take on as much work as they humanly can.

To the extend it’s possible to universalize the do’s and don’t’s, I thought it would be valuable to have this thread. The more specific the better. I will start with the obvious: 

Do:

- Show up on time

- Wear a different shirt every day

- Try to meet lawyers at the firm

Don’t:

- Watch Instagram reels all day

- Be a jerk

- Get too drunk with other lawyers/students

[chaboywb]

Summer is a good opportunity to try out a range of areas of law (assuming a full service firm), meet people that you think will be interesting and begin becoming comfortable with the work environment. It's important to stand out and start forming relationships that will carry you through articling, but you definitely don't want to be the person who makes a name for the wrong reasons. Being eager about seeking out work, respectful in your communications and enthusiastic about receiving and submitting deliverables will make a better impression than flawless legal work, which nobody expects from a summer student. The advice below may be a bit generic but hopefully applies to most summer job opportunities and comes from my experience as a student and observations as an associate.

Do:

• Knock on doors. Meaning, literally walk up to the doors of lawyers you want to work with and introduce yourself. It will feel awkward but it makes an impression and goes a very long way to being remembered. Virtual chats work okay for people who don't go to the office very often, but some of my best relationships come from taking the initiative of introducing myself in person early on.
• Try out areas of law that you know nothing about. The expectation at this stage is that you know nothing. This is the chance for you to learn about something brand new with close to zero expectations of work quality. The process of learning how to research, draft and review documents is what you're meant to become familiar with and does not require any specific substantive knowledge. 
• Ask questions, but in a sensible way. Sending a stream of consciousness email or repeated calls/Teams messages with one-off questions will annoy the assigning lawyer. Take time to understand the assignment and make a list of questions as you go, getting as far as you can on your known. Then, polish your list of questions and send them all in one go or set up a time to discuss them with the assigning lawyer. If you fundamentally don't understand what you've been asked to do, make sure you touch base early.

Don't:

• Stress about billables or compare to your peers. Nobody is looking closely at your hours as a student and there is not a strict target for summer students at any firm that I am aware of. Often, summer students are asked to work on client matters on a non-billable basis due to fee sensitivities or because the assigning lawyer knows they are sending you off on a tangent. I could imagine a student that dockets significantly less than 35 hours a week between billable and non-billable matters could receive a question from the student coordinator to make sure they are getting a quality summer experience, but this will not factor into your ability to get hired back unless you are blatantly avoiding work.
• Leave assignments until the last minute. I was always a procrastinator in school. I did a 180 once I got my first legal job and it did wonders for my ability to meet deadlines and deliver a product that I felt proud of. If it's Monday and you receive an assignment due Friday, aim to look at the initial materials immediately and give yourself an internal deadline of Wednesday. That way you can touch base with the assigning lawyer right away if something doesn't make sense and your final product can be polished before submission. As an associate, I assigned something to a student with a week's notice to an important deadline. The night before I expected the deliverable, the student wrote to tell me they could not access the documents I had emailed them, which were key to the assignment. Clearly, they hadn't even began the work until the last minute. The deliverable was full of questions/NTDs addressed to me. The correct approach would have been for the student to start earlier so they could discuss those questions with me and have them answered in time for the deliverable. This was an example of standing out in the wrong way.
• Make off-colour, sexist, racist, etc. comments or jokes. As an associate, I was extremely shocked at some of the things I heard students say to me or in the presence of other lawyers. Your stupid joke won't land and you will get permanently written off by certain people. Word travels very fast. This certainly ties into the advice of not drinking too much - there will be open bars at most events and it is easy to get carried away. One wrong move can destroy your reputation. Be very mindful of your actions as you develop more personal relationships with your peers.

[LMP]

Do: 

- Take the time to shadow lawyers. As an articling student and especially as a junior associate you will have to be more concerned with output and billing. Take the time now       to observe and learn. 

- Ask to get involved with things! If there is a small trial starting up ask if you can support it or even attend as second chair. If there is a more complex piece of work you want     to try your hand at, ask. No one will think badly of you for it (quite the opposite) and you might get exposed to some interesting work. 

- Learn how to work with your assistant. Not every firm does this, but I found it really hard to work with my assistant. Not because she was bad, but because as a student is      feels awkward. But your assistant will be incredibly important as an associate so it pays to learn how to work with them. 

- Get familiar with the firms software and tools. You want to be the person who knows how to use things without always asking for help. 

- Be nice to the support staff. Mailroom, legal assistants, reception, IT, be nice to everyone. Not only is it common courtesy but these people can be a huge help to you. 

 

Don't: 

- Be too competitive. Share the work that comes in and don't try to backstab or sabotage anyone. 

- Take on more than you can handle. You might think it makes you look good, but when you end up missing deadlines or turning in subpar work because you took on too             much, it looks pretty bad. 

- Look down on work or a practice area. Try everything. This is the type to do it! Don't let pre-conceived notions influence you or limit your options. 

[itsme]

Do: 

- Show up more than the minimum in-office requirement. While that’s probably closer to “everyday” now than it was in previous years, it remains highly advantageous to be physically present. You will meet more people and get more opportunities if people know they can walk by your desk and find a body to help them out. 
 

- Seek out work from small / niche practice groups. Some of the more meaningful and stimulating work I got to do over the summer came from niche areas where there may not be much student interest. It can be a chance to work more directly with a partner and see your work product go to clients rather than through myriad levels of mid-level review. 

[canuckfanatic]

Do:

Always bring a pen and notepad with you when you go to talk to an associate/partner. Even if you were just stopping by their office to talk about the game last night.

Don't:

Lie about how much you know. Be honest if you have 0 experience in something. Nobody expects you to know anything at all.

[GoatDuck]

On 2/26/2024 at 10:41 AM, chaboywb said:

Stress about billables or compare to your peers. Nobody is looking closely at your hours as a student and there is not a strict target for summer students at any firm that I am aware of. Often, summer students are asked to work on client matters on a non-billable basis due to fee sensitivities or because the assigning lawyer knows they are sending you off on a tangent. I could imagine a student that dockets significantly less than 35 hours a week between billable and non-billable matters could receive a question from the student coordinator to make sure they are getting a quality summer experience, but this will not factor into your ability to get hired back unless you are blatantly avoiding work.

Thank you for this. Any tips on how to strike the balance between, on the one hand, getting involved and taking on more work, and on the other hands, not overloading yourself during the summer? I know I will be tempted to take on a lot of work and try to dip my toes in many different areas and deliver good product, both to create a good impression but also honestly just to get exposure and learn. But also, I will need to say “no” here and there to keep myself from drowning, and I wouldn’t want my “No”s to discourage people from sending me work. 

[LMP]

7 minutes ago, GoatDuck said:

Thank you for this. Any tips on how to strike the balance between, on the one hand, getting involved and taking on more work, and on the other hands, not overloading yourself during the summer? I know I will be tempted to take on a lot of work and try to dip my toes in many different areas and deliver good product, both to create a good impression but also honestly just to get exposure and learn. But also, I will need to say “no” here and there to keep myself from drowning, and I wouldn’t want my “No”s to discourage people from sending me work. 

I think you might be slightly misunderstanding the post you are responding to (not that your post is wrong, you should be cognizant of how much you take on). See, what chaboywb is talking about is this fixation students sometimes have with billable hours. That is because billable hours are a significant metric that firms use to evaluate associates and even articling students. But the point is that as a summer student, no one really cares that much if you're hitting target (you likely won't even have one). So you should embrace non-billable work without worrying about how it might look. especially because, as stated above, a lot of student work tends to be non-billable.

[Rashabon]

I think they were just asking for advice on not taking on too much work and using that as a jumping off point.

The answer is to be fully prepared for some late nights and to try and figure out your own internal capacity as quickly as possible, as well as relying on mentors and others to help you navigate saying no or having to turn down work. If you have to say no, you can do so, but there are ways to do it that look better. For example, check the timing on tasks. Learn to organize so you can fit stuff in. Something that seems busy and you get first might be due a week from now, meaning you have time to take on something urgent that's due the next day. If you're starting to get jammed up and someone gives you a deadline, say "I can't get it done for this day, but what about X". Deadlines given to students aren't always firm because we're trying to get ahead of things by delegating, so there may be give in the calendar. Another alternative is to offer to find a replacement for the person asking. They may or may not take you up on it, but it offloads at least part of the hassle of delegating. Don't always rush to a flat "no" when there might be softer ways of saying no or ways to still manage it.

[OnlyResident]

Do: 

- Be very respectful of all the lawyers, especially the seniors ones. You need understand that working in corporate environment requires you to be mindful of the egos of your superiors. Don't make any comments that attack theirs egos or insult their competence. It sounds obvious, but you will often see lawyers doing things that you'd think does not happen or shouldn't happen in a legal practice. I recall a student talking to a lawyer who was a little stressed about an upcoming discovery, and the student told the lawyer that X work should have been done a while ago and not the day before, as was being requested of the student. 

 

[SNAILS]

Responses in this thread seem to be geared more to the commercial law context.

In Criminal Law

Do:

• Wear clothing or have clothing close at hand suitable to appear in court
• Be familiar with how to address a judge and general court process if you need to set a date or speak to a matter
• Be familiar with your principle lawyer(s) trial schedule. When are her upcoming Crown meetings, pretrials, client meetings?
• Be familiar with the facts of cases coming up for trial or plea bargain (know the basic facts and and have some rudimentary ideas about defense strategy)
• Read, listen to, and watch disclosure
• Keep notes on what you do so that you actually have usable ideas about evidence and triable issues
• If your principle lawyer permits, have a direct relationship with clients. Speak to them about their case, their disclosure, and act as a middle man to the lawyer.
• If permitted, review disclosure with your clients, take notes, form opinions, and figure out what the client wants. This can really help your principle with plea bargains.
• Though "billable hours" is not really a thing, do docket your time in cases where it is billable (I often worked 50+ hours and billed maybe 6-10 hours). Tracking and inputting your principle lawyer's time may also be required at some firms.
• Be prepared to deal with angry and mentally ill people, and act professionally at all times

Do Not

• Do not expect tasks to always come top down. If you are in an environment where you have string ground level contact with clients, you may need to bring client concerns to your lawyers attention and offer to deal with them. If your principle lawyer can trust you, you look good and get more challenging tasks.
• Do not ever disrespect or act condescending towards law clerks, paralegals, or receptionists. They know more sometimes on some issues than your principle lawyer, and they have a lot of influence on how things run at the firm.
• Do not breach client confidentiality
• Do not give copies of disclosure (printed or emailed) to the client unless you know exactly what your firm policy is. Usually, clients have to view videos in the office.
• Do not deny it if you made a mistake. People are much more sympathetic to helping you fix it if you admit it immediately. Lawyers and judges expect that you are just a law student who does not know everything.

[canuckfanatic]

Don't:

Use AI to look for case law or write briefs.

[canuckfanatic]

Don't:

Use a personal device to take notes

Use a random web tool for editing PDFs

If engaging with any AI, do not include any privileged/confidential information in your prompt

[Jaggers]

I think the big firms have custom instances of their AI things, so you can. But make sure that's true before you do.

[easttowest]

On 3/5/2024 at 4:47 PM, GoatDuck said:

Thank you for this. Any tips on how to strike the balance between, on the one hand, getting involved and taking on more work, and on the other hands, not overloading yourself during the summer? I know I will be tempted to take on a lot of work and try to dip my toes in many different areas and deliver good product, both to create a good impression but also honestly just to get exposure and learn. But also, I will need to say “no” here and there to keep myself from drowning, and I wouldn’t want my “No”s to discourage people from sending me work. 

Assuming you’ll be in a big law firm: A lot of it is trial and error and you will almost certainly end up with too much on your plate at some point. The problem with knocking on a lot of doors is that lawyers rarely have something for you immediately, but then as time goes on they’ll begin to reach out to you and the work will pile up. The best thing you can do is to be communicative about deadlines and your progress on assignments and basically follow Rashabon’s advice above. 

 

[Psychometronic]

Don't:

- Post any of your work on social media platforms, including DMs

- share conflict checks outside the office

- screenshot emails/other work-related communications for the purpose sharing with others, even privately

- discuss confidential information in chats, unless on an authorized platform 

- save your work on unauthorized cloud-based platforms 

 

[Turtles]

31 minutes ago, Psychometronic said:

Don't:

- Post any of your work on social media platforms, including DMs

- share conflict checks outside the office

- screenshot emails/other work-related communications for the purpose sharing with others, even privately

- discuss confidential information in chats, unless on an authorized platform 

- save your work on unauthorized cloud-based platforms 

 

I'm confused. Are you saying I can't film tiktok dances in the office?