Legal Lexicon: Legal Industry Lexicon (LIL) - Part I: Road to Becoming a Summer Associate
Legal Lexicon: Legal Industry Lexicon (LIL)
Part I: Road to Becoming
a Summer Associate
By: Kemi Kehinde
September 2022
Are you ready to become a lawyer? After spending hours in classes and prepping with exams, you may think you know all there is to know about excelling as an attorney. Unfortunately, while law school prepares us for legal research, writing and advocacy, what it often fails to provide us is the logistics of the law field. Many students can recite the right to free speech and the article of the Constitution that grants it but have no idea what a free market system in a law firm means or what it looks like. Without this information, it can be hard to choose a career path and to assimilate once beginning.
But, have no fear! Legal Lexicon is your guide to navigating the law field. While law school prepares you with legal skills, we’ll be preparing you with legal lingo!
Our first season of the Legal Lexicon is entitled the Legal Industry Lexicon (LIL). LIL is your Big Law firm starter pack. We’ll start by walking you through the road to becoming a Summer Associate at a Big Law firm.
What is a Summer Associate?
If you are interested in beginning your career at a Big Law firm, the most common way to do it is by first becoming a Summer Associate. A Summer Associate refers to a law student hired to work over the summer for a law firm. Students typically get accepted into 2L summer associate programs (i.e., they work for the law firm during the summer between their 1L and 2L years), but some firms also have 1L positions.
Summer associate programs are intended to help law students get real-world legal work experience and also learn more about the firm. Summer Associates work under the supervision of firm attorneys on real assignments that can include writing memos and briefs, shadowing client meetings, preparing presentations, checking citations, summarizing trial evidence, and more. They also participate in social activities to get to know the firm attorneys, other summer associates, and ultimately the culture of the firm.
Summer associate programs typically last 10 weeks but some firms will require fewer or more weeks. Most large law firms pay a Summer Associate the same salary as they pay their first-year attorneys for the duration of their program. At the end of the summer program, the law firm will almost always offer its 2L summer associates an offer to work for the firm after graduation.
How to become a Summer Associate: OCI and Pre-OCI
OCI
In order to acquire a Summer Associate position, 2L students typically go through a process called OCI (On-Campus Interviewing). OCI is a forum where law firms and legal employers interview law students to hire them for summer associate positions.
OCI typically takes place right before the fall semester of your second year of law school. There are also smaller versions of OCI for 1Ls and 3Ls. The process begins with law students, who identify the law firms and legal employers they are interested in. Some law schools allow employers to pre-select law students, others use a bidding and lottery system, and some use a mix of the last two methods. Thereafter, students will participate in a series of interviews with the firms they’ve matched with. Think of it like online dating, but with law firms!
OCI interviews typically last around 20 minutes. They are typically “screening” interviews which simply means it’s the first step in the law firm’s summer associate hiring process. In other words, if your OCI interview goes well, the firm invites you for more extensive interviewing which is called a “callback. (Both screening and callback interviews will be covered in more detail later in this article.)
In the past few years, COVID-19 greatly changed OCI’s format. Before the pandemic, law firms would camp out at or near your law school for one or more days to conduct interviews. In the past couple of years, OCI has been held virtually. In either format, it is important for students to be professional, prepared, polished, personable, enthusiastic, knowledgeable about the firm, and engaging with their interviewers. OCI is very important because, for most lawyers, it is the way they get their first job at a large law firm.
Pre-OCI
Though OCI is the traditional recruiting mechanism wherein law students get their summer positions, Pre-OCI is another way students can get an offer from a Big Law firm. Pre-OCI takes place the summer before OCI begins when many law firms start their summer associate recruiting efforts.
The actual Pre-OCI timeline varies based on the market, but as more and more firms have shifted their 2L summer associate recruiting focus to Pre-OCI in the last few years, Pre-OCI has started earlier and earlier with some students reporting interviews in late May/early June.
Pre-OCI provides students with the opportunity to secure a 2L summer position before the formal OCI recruiting process begins. It has become an increasingly common tool for firms to recruit diverse talent. This may be especially helpful for students who have already identified and narrowed down their specific firms of interest. If given an offer, students may then choose to forego OCI altogether. The Pre-OCI period also allows law students to practice for OCI by communicating with lawyers and participating in various firm networking and mock/ informational interview opportunities.
Law schools have different rules regarding participation in Pre-OCI activities. Some encourage it and some strongly advise against it with some exceptions. Students can partake in Pre-OCI by participating in various job fairs or networking opportunities organized by firms, student organizations, or diversity pipeline programs. Around April of each year, PracticePro publishes a list of upcoming job fairs. In the meantime, you can also Google “Law Student Job Fairs” to get an idea of what may come up in the future.
Students can also participate in Pre-OCI informally, by simply continuing their previous communications with firms. For example, students should continue communicating and networking with firms that interviewed them (but couldn’t give them an offer) for their 1L summer. Constant communication will make you stand out, and potentially allow you to skip some of the interview process!
Preparing for OCI and Pre-OCI
Now that you know what a Summer Associate is and how to get an interview (through OCI and pre-OCI), you need to know the key to learning about law firms, so you can excel during interviews and networking opportunities. There are several free resources available to law students and lawyers to learn more about various Big Law firm including:
Vault
Vault has recently merged with and is now populating information on a website called Firsthand. Vault is a resource for lawyers and law students to learn about firm rankings and reputations. Vault surveys associates at top firms, and uses their responses to create rankings. In addition to general rankings, some of the other Vault rankings include practice areas (including niche practice areas like labor and employment, sports and entertainment, or appellate litigation), diversity and inclusion, quality of life, and overall best firms to work for.
Vault also provides law firm profiles. These profiles include associate reviews, information about summer programs, the company’s overall stats, initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, and more!
Am Law
Am Law varies in that it makes available the financial revenue of top law firms in the legal industry. Each year, Am Law shares information like the total revenue of top firms, the average revenue per lawyer, and profits per equity partner in its eagerly anticipated Am Law 100 report. Am Law also provides the rankings of top firms that created the highest gross revenue.
NALP Directory
NALP Directory is another legal career source that provides a profile of legal employers: firms, government agencies, public interest organizations, and corporations. NALP’s search functions allow you to find law firms by location, practice area, firm size and other criteria. For example, NALP can provide information about which firms hire 1L summer associates (by choosing “1Ls” under the “Organizations that hire” dropdown).
When researching Big Law firms, NALP Directory provides information about firm demographics, compensation and benefits, partnership and advancement, recruiting and hiring, hours and work arrangements, pro bono and public interest, diversity and inclusion practices, and professional development opportunities. Additionally, to prepare for interviews, NALP allows you to create comparison reports across employers, so that you can keep track of different information about different firms. You can compare information like partnership opportunities, salary, diversity and inclusion and other criteria, across firms.
As you can probably tell, there are a world of resources that are available to excel in your OCI and pre-OCI interviews and land that summer associate gig. These sources can be the difference between you and another candidate, so it is integral to know the ins and outs of the legal industry. Combined, Vault, Am Law and NALP Directory can tell you about a firm's profitability and reputation. Not only will they teach you about firms, and help you choose one that aligns with your career desires, but they can also provide you with facts and talking points to show your interest in a firm during OCI and Pre-OCI interviews.
Good luck with your search and follow us on social media for more tips to help you in the process.