Summer starting soon? Book a free 15-minute consultation to set yourself up for the return offer.

The summer associate program is part recruiting exercise, part real work, part ten-week cocktail party. The firm is spending considerable money on you and they want to give you an offer. Your job is to not make that difficult for them.

The Entire Summer Has One Goal

The return offer. Not the best work product of your life. Not winning over every partner. Everything else — the events, the assignments, the lunches — exists in service of that single outcome. Make every decision through the question: does this make it easier or harder for them to give me an offer?

Say Yes to Everything Social

The happy hours, the dinners, the baseball games — they are all evaluations. The summer associate who comes to everything and is genuinely present is the one people remember positively. You do not have to stay until the end of everything. But you need to show up, be engaged, and demonstrate that you want to be there.

Treat Every Assignment Like It Matters

Some summer assignments are real work on real deals. Some are invented to keep you busy. Treat them identically. When you turn in work, ask what you could have done better. This signals the intellectual seriousness that senior associates value in people they will be working with for years.

Take the Mid-Summer Review Seriously

If your mid-summer review has any yellow flags — even small ones — take them seriously. A flag that goes unaddressed becomes the reason someone doesn’t advocate for you at the end. Ask specifically what to focus on in the back half.

What to Do With a Bad Assignment

The associate who becomes visibly disengaged on a boring assignment is the one people remember when it is time to vote. Do the boring work well, turn it in cleanly, and you get better assignments in the back half.

The return offer is given to the summer associate who made everyone in the building think: I hope they end up on my deals.

If you want to talk through what the summer actually looks like day-to-day, the first 15 minutes are free. More here.