Courting Interns : L.A.’s Law: Of Supply and Demand

They will enjoy free tickets to Dodger games and the Hollywood Bowl, play volleyball at beach parties and softball at picnics, feast on L’Hermitage’s filet mignon or on pool-side hamburgers and perhaps spend an expense-paid weekend in Palm Springs or Mammoth while earning $600 to $700 a week.

Called summer interns, summer clerks or summer associates, the “top of the top” students from the country’s most prestigious law schools are beginning to arrive in Los Angeles and other cities across the nation for the annual mating ritual with large law firms.

Although California has roughly one lawyer for every 275 residents and more attorneys than any other state, major firms here as well as in other large cities continue to expand, hiring perhaps 30 new graduates a year. Demanding the “best and the brightest,” they expend money, energy and high-priced time to court the 2,000 or so students who finish in the top third of their classes at about 30 top-rated law schools.

Begun in the 1960s to convince anti-Establishment law students that big firms could be acceptable, the summer program is the core of this intensely competitive recruiting effort. Firms traditionally offer permanent jobs to most summer interns and expect acceptances from at least half of them. Attorneys--and no firm trusts the work to personnel employees--recruit the summer people by interviewing top students on college campuses and inviting them for an expense-paid look at the firm.

“The driving force is that it is a law student’s market,” said Thomas M. McCoy, co-chairman of the Summer Committee at the firm of O’Melveny & Myers, which observes its 100th anniversary this summer. “For the best and the brightest coming out of law school, the world’s their oyster. And the competition is getting fiercer.”

The summer programs do involve work--about 40 hours a week compared to a full-fledged lawyer’s 50 to 60--but also emphasize play. The law firms are out to sell themselves and the city, and they believe that they can most effectively do that by planning parties for the interns to meet partners and associates and by showing off Los Angeles’ cultural and recreational possibilities.

“I believe the social part of the program is important . . . to enable the visitors in a reasonably short period of time to find out who we are and to make assessments of us as people,” said Robert S. Warren, chairman of the Hiring Committee for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Akin to fraternity or sorority rush, the summer is a look-each-other-over time in a profession in which firms prefer to hire neophytes and train them in their own image. Like the fraternity or sorority, a law firm is choosing associates for life.

“We do all this because we have to live with these people for the next 20 or 30 years,” said Linda Smith, co-chairman of the summer committee at O’Melveny & Myers. “It goes back to the family concept, and even large law firms like to think of themselves as families.”

Typically, the megafirm intern will work 6 to 12 weeks, handling about one project a week, either researching legal problems or drafting contract or court documents to be reviewed and used by an assigning lawyer. He also will accompany lawyers on “spectator assignments,” watching a veteran argue in court or conduct a deposition.

He often is assigned a “big sibling,” a partner or associate in the firm who will serve as mentor and confidante--and see that he gets invited to lunch.

Off duty, he will be urged to play softball, basketball and volleyball; accompany lawyers and their spouses to sports and cultural events; attend a couple of firm picnics or parties. He may be invited on a weekend anniversary bash or retreat and go to several small, informal dinners at attorneys’ homes.

Although firms in other cities like to send the interns off to play on cruises or river rafting trips, Los Angeles lawyers prefer the backyard barbecue approach, arguing that it is the best way for interns and lawyers to get acquainted. Whatever the event, the firm picks up the tab for both interns and their attorney hosts.

Law Firm Ratings

In an annual survey by American Lawyer magazine asking about 5,000 interns in 228 law offices across the country to evaluate 1984 summer programs, Los Angeles firms rated a citywide average of 4.44 points on a 5-point scale, compared to a national average of 4.31 and citywide averages of 4.47 for San Francisco, 4.25 for New York and 4.17 for Washington. Included were questions about the work required and the play provided.

The largest Los Angeles-based law firms, listed with the number of interns expected this summer, who supervises them and the firms’ ratings in the 1984 survey:

1) Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, with 465 attorneys in 12 offices, will employ 87 summer associates, about 60 of them in Los Angeles, under Warren’s direction. The firm rated 4.35 on the survey’s 5-point scale, ranking 16th most popular in Los Angeles.

2) O’Melveny & Myers, with 375 attorneys in five offices, will greet 52 summer associates, 42 of them in the Los Angeles and Century City offices, under Smith’s and McCoy’s guidance. O’Melveny’s summer program rated 4.23 on the interns’ survey, ranking 17th most popular in Los Angeles.

3) Latham & Watkins, with 290 attorneys in six offices, will court 44 summer clerks, 18 of them in Los Angeles, guided by Kenneth W. Oder, chairman of the recruiting committee. The firm ranked first among Los Angeles firms in the intern survey with a 4.84 on the 5-point scale.

4) Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, with 200 attorneys in six offices, will employ 62 summer associates, 44 of them in Los Angeles and West Los Angeles, supervised by Jamie Broder, chairman of the summer associates committee. Paul, Hastings rated a 4.39 on the intern survey, ranking 14th in popularity among Los Angeles firms.

5) Irell & Manella, with 120 attorneys in two offices, will greet 35 summer associates in the Century City and smaller Newport Beach office, guided by Chris Kennedy, chairman of the summer committee. The firm rated 4.5 on the intern survey, ranking 11th in the city.

Smaller Firms

By contrast to the large firms, the American Lawyer survey concluded that interns often feel happiest at mid-size law firms that have smaller, less-organized summer programs.

In Los Angeles, for example, the prestigious 50-lawyer Hufstedler, Miller, Carlson & Beardsley firm, which regularly spawns judges and presidents of the California Bar and Los Angeles County Bar Assn., employed three interns last summer and will have only five this year. Dennis M. Perluss, recruiting chairman, and Warren L. Ettinger, his summer co-chairman, pair the clerks with a “big sibling” and provide the usual free tickets to theater and sports events.

The smaller firms tend to include interns in their own activities, rather than schedule events especially for them. Last summer, Hufstedler clerks attended a free weekend firm-wide retreat in Palm Springs. About once a week, all available attorneys go to lunch with the interns, and interns are always welcome at impromptu wine-and-cheese sessions in partners’ offices at day or week’s end.

“One of the sweetest touches was in our first week: They brought us bouquets of flowers--just a thing to make you feel warm and wanted,” said Donna Harvey, Santa Monica, a graduating law student at USC who interned with Hufstedler last summer and will join the firm after taking the bar exam.

“One of my greatest memories is Seth Hufstedler bringing in a giant zucchini from his garden and laying it on my desk. I doubt senior partners pay that kind of attention to clerks in the megafirms.”

Even the megafirms, however, want their interns to know the members. How important the glitzy parties are in that effort is debatable.

‘Lot of Eating’

“There is a lot of eating. I jog six miles a day and still gain 10 pounds every summer,” said the popular Latham & Watkins’ Oder, laughing. “We put weight on them. They are substantial people when they leave here.

“But I don’t think you hire anybody with flashy fringes,” he added more seriously. “You hire them with real honest-to-God opportunity to practice law and nice people to work with who treat you like a human being and not a factory worker.”

Although social events are important for introducing interns to attorneys, Gibson, Dunn’s Warren agrees that the work is the thing.

“A summer here is not a boondoggle. It is not ‘come out for a party,’ ” Warren said. “We discovered over the years that the summer associate doesn’t want a boondoggle. They want to know what it feels like to be a lawyer.”

Although they enjoy the partying, interns sometimes feel pressured to socialize and prefer the work part of the programs.

“If anybody has got any sense, the work is the most important,” said Hufstedler intern Harvey, “because that is what you are going to be stuck with. The parties stop, but the work doesn’t.”

“The bottom line,” said UCLA third-year law student Charles J. Fanning from McLean, Va., who interned last summer at Paul, Hastings and will join the firm this fall, “is you are there to find out what it will be like to be an associate and to get an offer.”

Broder and other program gurus stressed that social events are strictly voluntary but conceded that interns nevertheless often feel pressured to attend, knowing they must meet as many attorneys as possible who will evaluate them. That may be why interns often feel more comfortable in the less-structured summer programs of smaller firms.

‘Camp So-and-So’

“Sometimes a firm gets the nickname ‘Camp So-and-So’ because of all the parties. But I think a big social schedule is a negative because you have to be on all the time,” said Hufstedler intern Harvey, 34, who previously worked as a travel agent.

“I would feel uncomfortable if I had to go out all the time. The experience is so intense. You just want some time to yourself to digest it all, and if you have to spend all weekend with the attorneys, you don’t get away enough to get it in perspective.”

Professional performance and a concern for the firm’s responsibilities are high on the list of requirements for any intern who wants a permanent job. For a sure ticket out the door, an intern need only belittle or berate a secretary or put pleasure and personal demands before the firm’s duty.

“We try to balance interns’ work so they have time to get to know Southern California, but when a hostile tender offer hits, they get to burn the midnight oil with us,” said Irell’s Kennedy. “For us and the people we are looking for, when the highest quality kind of legal work is in front of you, you go for it. You don’t say, ‘Gee, I’m going to the movies tonight.’ ”

Law firms often pride themselves on a certain image, and interns may wonder if they are being inspected during the myriad parties for conversational ability or how they dress.

No Wallflowers

“We are not hiring wallflowers,” Kennedy said cryptically.

Gibson, Dunn’s Warren explained why attorneys do, indeed, observe interns’ social behavior by saying: “It isn’t necessary to be gregarious or glib, but in the law profession you really don’t have somebody in the back room with test tubes and a beaker all by his lonesome inventing a new drug. Law is a people business, so someplace along the line people have to be able to demonstrate acceptable human relations with clients, lawyers and staff people.”

No firm has a set dress code, but even the most casual lawyers believe that their “work clothes” center on suits. Interns rarely bolt the herd.

“I can’t remember sitting anybody down and telling him you have to wear a tie,” said Paul, Hastings’ Broder. “These are smart people. They figure that out for themselves.”

How much money law firms devote to the care and feeding of summer interns is uncertain because few budget the program separately or are willing to reveal the amounts, but it runs easily into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most expensive, said Hufstedler’s Perluss, is not the seemingly high interns’ salaries (a half million dollars or so per summer for a megafirm) but attorneys’ time. Some firms, notably Gibson, Dunn, release summer program coordinators from all legal duties while the interns are in residence, and other supervisors spend 50% or more of their working hours coaching the youngsters.

Summer Salaries

“If a lawyer who bills at $150 an hour (rates for the Hufstedler firm range from $95 to $250) spends five hours a week reviewing and critiquing an intern’s work and attending extended lunches with him, that’s $750 a week the firm lost,” Perluss said.

Los Angeles firms’ $600 to $700 weekly summer salaries compare well with those paid in Washington and other major cities but are less than the $800 to $1,000 a week offered by New York firms. Local firms assist interns in finding housing but insist that the interns pay the rent, while New York firms typically subsidize half the rent or pay a moving allowance.

What boggles Hufstedler’s Ettinger is that competition has escalated the summer salaries for the second-year law students who have not even passed the bar to about 85% of the pay offered a beginning lawyer.

“In every other field known to mankind, the young college graduate would pay to go to work in a setting where he could learn and get a leg up on getting a job,” said Ettinger. “We do it just the opposite.”

Luke Harada, 27--a Sansei, or third-generation Japanese-American from Glenview, Ill., finishing law and business administration degrees at Northwestern University who interned with Paul, Hastings and has accepted a job there--said many students probably would accept internships without pay.

Nevertheless, Harada said, the legal intern salaries remain lower than those paid by businesses and, although they are heady to a beginner, they shrink next to the $17,000 annual cost of a private law school.

“We really don’t expect to see that kind of money,” he said, “but going to a different location, I had to rent a car, rent an apartment, rent furniture. It was a break-even situation for me.”

The pay, the parties and the projects all seem likely to continue.

“When you are talking about the top of the top law students, you are talking about the Joe Namaths, the Magic Johnsons of the law business,” said Hufstedler’s Ettinger. “You are talking about the people who will make the franchise go.”

“At our pinnacle of the profession, we can’t continue to do here what we do without a continuing infusion of the best and the brightest,” said O’Melveny’s McCoy.

“And,” he added, “the whole process is a lot of fun.”