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Lunch/coffee meetings with senior partners (one is a board member) are lined up next week. What should I ask or tell them other than I'm having a great summer blah blah? Any tips to pull out good conversations without being seemed gunnerish would be appreciated.

Don’t talk about work the whole time. Find some common ground outside of work you like to talk about. They want you to be a normal person. Do you have kids the same age? Enjoy the same sports? Golf? Movies? Music? Literature?

What it is really doesn’t matter, but be genuine about it. Don’t pretend to be an expert on Mozart (if you’re not) just because they love classical music. But if you played the flute in high school, there’s probably something there.

Commute, what dry cleaner, where to go for lunch, story behind that stupid hat on the shelf, how do you like that Apple Watch (possibly bought with fitness subsidy), good gyms around here , and so on.

Basically I think asking about personal life with no background is just weird but I don’t want to be talking about work all the time either so I tend to talk about where work and life intersect in some way. That and I really try to make an integral part of my life (not compartmentalized) that I can enjoy as much as possible.

Assuming you're a summer associate at the partners' firm. If so, ask about things they like about the firm, what they think is important in young associates, what they're working on, how they started doing work for that client, how they ended up at the firm, that type of thing. How did they choose their practice area? Did they always know they wanted to be a litigator/whatever?

I feel like in an hour long lunch with a partner, maybe 20 minutes should be work-related conversation, and the other 40 can be chatting about hobbies, the weather, anything non-controversial. If there's more than just you and the partner there, the conversation should just flow naturally, and you won't really have to drive it, but if it's just you and the partner, then having a few questions teed up may be helpful if the conversation lags. Don't overthink it - I always worried about these types of lunches as an anxious summer, and they were always fine. It's fine to not like, convince them to be your best friend - being pleasant and making a few connections is really all you're looking for.

“Do you expect to announce summer bonuses in June or is the firm’s plan to wait until July?”

OP here. Thank you for all your advice! They all make sense.

Above poster: one brave associate directly asked it to a managing partner in all office meeting a couple days ago (not KE). Answer was negative, fwiw.