Its that time of the year. Young adults (for the most part), most with no experience in the business world and none practicing law, arrive at their chosen law firms to begin several weeks of fun, merriment, and just enough work to get an offer. Ahh, heck, I don’t want to overstate it. Some law firms make their summer associates really work. For the law firms, its a time to shine and really impress these potential future partners. Each firm wants the cream of the law school crop to choose them.
But what does the client see? To start with, they know that summer associates don’t have experience and can’t work unsupervised. They know that only the highest quality work product will suffice. If they’ve worked inside big firms, they know there is a scramble right before the summer associates arrive to come up with enough assignments. They know that some significant portion of the assignments are make-work. That is, assignments that would not be done if the summer associate was not there to do it. They see an unconscionable billing rate assigned to this person. And often times, they see a bill for the work performed by this the inexperienced, untrained, not-yet-a-lawyer student.
Several years ago, Butler Rubin did away with our summer program. Economics and client service were not the only reasons, but they were important ones. The issue goes obviously beyond one firm, and really requires a systemic change.
Isn’t it time to start thinking about apprenticeships?