Possible To Take A Friday or Two Off During SA Position? Forum

[PotatoSalad]

As a summer, you're paid $730/day. Two days would make it $1,500. Why would you forfeit that to pay your school extra money to get a few credits that you would get anyway during the course of a regular semester, where the cost would be incorporated into your tuition?

This is irrelevant to the OP’s question and I don’t mean to sidetrack, but is this really how summer associate pay works? I definitely don’t recall it working like that.

I don't think it's the practice at my firm, but I am aware of firms that treat it this way.

A friend at Covington DC was told he could take time off but would give up the daily pay rate during his summer.

[Nagster5]

I summered at two firms, one paid you by the week and the other paid you by the day. It just depends on how they do it.

[thatlawlkid]

taking time off for a close relatives wedding is cool, right? got one on a friday and have been stressing about it.

[BasilHallward]

taking time off for a close relatives wedding is cool, right? got one on a friday and have been stressing about it.

You're fine. Give sufficient notice.

[Anonymous User]

I'm at a V30 law firm and most of my law school friends are too. I took two days off during the summer for a wedding and no one cared or noticed. My firm's policy is to allow 2 days off for any reason (illness, personal, etc.) before docking SA pay. When they dock the pay, they do it pro rata with the number of days you take off beyond the permitted number of days (so if you take 3 days off at my firm, you lose 1 day's pay).

Re: summer events - these are not typically scheduled on Fridays anyway because firms know that you have a life outside of work. Events are scheduled Mon. to Thurs. to ensure the highest attendance possible from both summer associates and associates + partners. No associate or partner is going to want to spend their Friday entertaining summer associates. There are no weekend events at all unless your firm takes you on a retreat or trip to a different office (lucky you if it's abroad).

Lastly, I don't know anyone at any V30 firm who did real work. It was all fake. They'll make you think it's real, but trust me, it's fake or unnecessary marketing-type work (except pro bono assignments - those are real).

If you're at a 100% offer firm, take the course. It will literally not affect your summer associate experience at all.

[QContinuum]

It was all fake. They'll make you think it's real, but trust me, it's fake or unnecessary marketing-type work (except pro bono assignments - those are real).

Are you serious? At what firm do seniors have the time/energy/interest to craft an elaborate Potemkin village of fake work disguised as real client work in order to make summers feel important? And how does the truth not leak out - there have got to be summers who are friends with current associates at the firm.

[Anonymous User]

Speaking as a senior corporate associate in NY:

-don’t plan multiple Fridays off. It’s a risk. You could be between assignments or working on some low-stress memo, in which can you’ll be fine. But what if you get staffed to a deal team? Sure, you can’t do much other than coallate documents in a closing room or, maybe if you’re good, do a signature page. But still, you’re on the team and most summers don’t even get to do that. If you’re like “mmkay, closing happening Friday but I’m gonna check out”, you’ve annoyed the associates on the team who inconvenienced themselves to include you. Remember, staffing a summer doesn’t save time, it adds time. We do it because we want you to see what real work is like and because it’s better to be a mensch - someone staffed us years ago and it’s our turn to pay forward.

Totally different if it’s an important wedding or something similar, and also different if you leave office at 1PM to grab a Friday flight or beat traffic rather than skipping Friday entirely. A couple of times I’ve had summers leaving at noon on a Friday to go to 5 year college reunions. That’s viewed as obviously OK.

- summer makework is ubiquitous, verging on universal. Summer work product is so bad - just as first year work product is so bad for the first six months or so - that any work assigned is assigned for the sole purpose of helping them learn or to evaluate them, and then you redo the work yourself so it is done ok. The most common makework assignment is legal research that someone already knows the answer to because they did it themselves on another matter 6 months ago.

[Anonymous User]

I think a lot of summers (especially at bigger offices) get make-work, but I definitely wouldn't count on it. I'm sure a bit of the work I did as a summer was make-work (one research question, and some explicit training stuff), but most of it was real (if double checked). The SJ motion I wrote on a very small case was heavily altered, but the bulk of it still made it into the final filing (I checked). And for my transactional stuff I was submitting final versions of the signature pages/incorporation documents etc. I collected/made and had (limited) direct contact with clients.

The point is, there's a chance you are going to be staffed on actual stuff which being away for three days twice could be detrimental for. At the same time I think you're probably fine (at least if it's a 100% offer firm).

[Anonymous User]

It was all fake. They'll make you think it's real, but trust me, it's fake or unnecessary marketing-type work (except pro bono assignments - those are real).

Are you serious? At what firm do seniors have the time/energy/interest to craft an elaborate Potemkin village of fake work disguised as real client work in order to make summers feel important? And how does the truth not leak out - there have got to be summers who are friends with current associates at the firm.

Anon from above. Not kidding at all. By "fake" I mean work that has already been done before, as other posters have mentioned. E.g., research that a junior associate has already done and knows the answer to, diligence that has already been done, etc. This is actually a time-saving measure because no one wants to pore over shitty summer associate work to fix all the mistakes. Summers take forever to do anything (partially due to lack of experience and knowledge, but mostly because they have so many summer events and trainings to attend) and no client has days and days to wait for a work product. So it's easier to give summers fake work and check it against the real work product that was already completed sometime before the summer associates arrived. That way the summers get a "real" work experience (in that it once was a real assignment) and no one has to risk relying on a summer associate to finish the assignment correctly and in a timely manner.

I think most V50 firms feel that the networking that gets done during your summer is far more important than anything you may learn, substance-wise, so most encourage attending the summer trainings and events over attempting to actually do real, time-sensitive work.

When I was a summer, I thought maybe 50% of my work was real and 50% was fake. When I came back as a first year, I realized it was all fake and I had a good laugh with the associates who had given me that fake work. When it was my turn to give assignments to summer associates, I quickly realized how annoying it would be to give them actual work, so I too gave them fake work. Also partners would never let a summer associate show up on a client bill (imagine how outraged the client would be), so anything they did would be written off anyway or charged to a non-billable number. Easier all around to just give fake work.

Anyway it's totally fine to take a few days off. It's highly likely no one will notice, and it's you definitely WILL NOT miss out on on a full-time job offer for missing 2-3 days. No firm would ruin their offer rate for such an inconsequential thing. The firm has real first years to do their closings or whatever. You will 100% not be essential, in any way, to any deal you may be "staffed" on.

[Guchster]

Taking time off is fine as long as you respectfully communicate well in advance with your deal/case teams. it will only come back to bite you if you burn your team by flaking out on them, acting entitled or surprising them--in other words, things that are personality revealing about how you might act as an associate (it doesn't matter for the actual deal/case--the team got on fine without you and will get on fine when you leave).

If you're stressed about it, just make sure you approach your team with humility--I would appreciate the offer you made in your OP to stay late and work on the weekend to make up your absence (even though I would never in a million years take you up on it); still, don't say it if you don't mean it in case you're working with jerks.