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Summary: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP plan on dropping most summer internships.
Quinn is at it again. They have to be different. First it was their difference recruiting summer interns. In their bid to recruit junior lawyers, culling the best from the best schools, they refused to recruit alongside their competition, but held receptions in the spring of 1Ls. Now they are foregoing most summer interning altogether, in favor of focusing on recent grads and those holding clerkships.
The summer-intern programs traditionally practiced in firms across the nation have students intern during the summer after their second year, with the hope that they will join the firm full time upon graduating. John Quinn told his attornies this Monday that this tradition doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“Although we do our best to ensure that summer associates do real and meaningful work, summer programs are unavoidably unrealistic to a degree,” he said in an email. “Especially when it comes to the trial work we do here, it’s difficult to parcel out projects that fit within the two months summer associates are with us.”
Rather than pay for the pretense that these interns are doing meaningful work, Quinn hopes to transfer that money in the direction of sign on bonuses for third year students and judicial clerks.
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“We will redirect money saved on the summer associate program to signing bonuses for summers, third-year students and judicial clerks who join us on a permanent basis,” he explained.
Quinn can do this, it is inferred, because they are elite and will attract elite law students. “I am sure that’s true of the average law student [that they would not wish to join a firm they did not intern at] but we’ve never been looking for the average law student. We think those candidates will appreciate our efforts to put more money in their pockets as they come in the door rather than excessively spending on summer programs that many view as a waste of time.”
The program won’t be completely canned, however. Quinn plans on interning 5-10 students, in place of their previous 50.
News Source: WSJ
