Pro Bono: The summer associate life

By Margaret C. Benson
Chicago Volunteer Legal Services

Aaaaahhhhh, the summer associate life.

They celebrate the Cubs from a Wrigleyville rooftop … and help a mom get guardianship over her disabled 18-year old son. They picnic to the sounds of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia … and review a licensing agreement for a struggling musician.

They sip champagne and nibble Brie at a senior partner’s swanky party in Lincoln Park … and file an asylum petition for a young man trying to escape certain death by state police in his native country.

Life as a summer associate is a little bit luxury and a little bit reality.

Summer associates have it made. They are paid well, but not worked too hard. Wined and dined, they spend the summer getting a taste of law firm life and business, before heading back to finish that pesky final year of law school. Their ”taste” of business is just that.

For the most part, they spend time in various departments, sampling an assortment of work. One week they may help a litigation partner draft a discovery request, while the next week they review the safe-harbor provision in a security agreement.

And, they sample pro bono. Most firms control, to a certain extent, what type of pro bono their summer associates are allowed to do, offering them a range of projects with certain select pro bono programs. Despite the limitation, the result is still a veritable smorgasbord of opportunities, from working with a team of lawyers on a single, long-term project, to taking on one or two relatively simple, individual cases.

Check out the websites of Chicago’s prestigious law firms — the ones who hire large numbers of summer associates and wine and dine them to distraction. You’ll see that the firm’s pro bono offerings are front and center, along with promises of significant work, significant fun, and, of course, significant salary.

These firms have discovered that pro bono is important to those best and brightest they want to hire. As a result, they make pro bono a centerpiece of their summer associate programs.

Many firms introduce this work to their summer associate class by hosting pro bono breakfasts, luncheons, or receptions, where program staff make formal presentations or simply mingle and talk about the various projects or cases that they offer. The students are encouraged to ask questions and choose their own work from the proffered options.

Some firms have their summers work together on a single group job, such as court observation and statistical gathering for institutional reform projects, or creating manuals and training on legal issues for high school or other general audiences.

Firms that sponsor legal clinics or projects steer their youngsters to that work, too, although never exclusively. Again, it’s all about giving these kids a taste. Pro bono for summer associates benefits all of the players — the firms, the students and the legal service programs.

The programs get work done, in some cases, work that full-time attorneys won’t do. Let’s call it ‘’spade” work — the turning of earth in preparation for future planting. The students get to contribute to work that many of them went to law school to do — save-the-world work.

Once they graduate and have to start repaying their student loans, world-saving loses priority, so these summer jobs take on added importance. And the firms get to evaluate the work of these potentially future employees in a discreet, effective way that doesn’t impact their clients. It’s a win-win-win for all involved.

Thanks to the Public Interest Law Initiative’s (PILI) Graduate Fellowship Program, nearly two-dozen law firms contribute to the summer pro bono scene in another, noteworthy way.

While many firms pay newly hired law graduates a stipend to spend the summer preparing for the bar exam, participating firms pay these students additional money to work for area legal aid and pro bono organizations. These PILI fellows work part-time for five weeks before the bar exam, full-time for the next five weeks, then have a month to relax, travel, and enjoy life before beginning their new careers and, in many cases, not seeing the light of day for several years.

Most PILI fellows love their legal services work and believe that it helped, not hindered their bar exam preparation. The fellowship kept them engaged in interesting, compelling work, and kept them away from friends and colleagues who were freaking out. It also made most of them true converts to pro bono. Although eager to begin their law firm careers, many were reluctant to leave behind the meaningful work they were allowed to handle in their legal aid offices, and took it with them, to complete — pro bono — in their new jobs.

There’s a reason Chicago law firms are offering extensive pro bono opportunities to their summer associates. It’s good for business. And that is good for our profession.