No Objections Here

About 78 percent of entry-level associates nationwide leave their firm within five years, according to the National Association for Law Placement's Foundation for Law Career Research and Education. Some take prestigious jobs with the government, and others get frustrated that it's hard to make partner and get a share of firm revenue, said James G. Leipold, NALP's executive director.

"Folks leave to take what they perceive to be better offers because the economy is good," Leipold said. "Others are fleeing because they find the demands too onerous -- it's a tough way to make money."

Indeed, budding lawyers say they spend much of their office time looking for better deals. They peruse such Web sites as Above the Law, a must-read legal blog written by David Lat, a former federal prosecutor in Newark and former co-editor of the Wonkette politics and media blog.

One of Above the Law's scoops this month was headlined "WilmerHale Summers: Where's Our Raise?" The blog published an e-mail from an anonymous summer associate in the Boston office who complained that the summers weren't getting the customary pro-rated weekly equivalent of first-year associates. Instead of about $3,100 a week ($160,000 a year), the tipster wrote, they were getting only $2,800 (about $145,000 a year).

"What the heck? . . . We're a little miffed," the aggrieved summer associate dashed off . "It's not only irritating for the wilmer summers, but its also somewhat embarrassing knowing that the small boston firms many of us shirked in order to pursue the bigger paycheck (and bigger loan-killer) are actually paying more than a purported big law firm."

The firm's Washington office perhaps avoided a blog-lashing by bumping up its associates' salaries in midsummer after learning that other firms were paying more. And the firm made the raises retroactive.

"No one is going to choose to come here simply for the sake of the last dollar," said Craig Goldblatt, a partner at the Washington office of WilmerHale. Still, he added, the firm raised summer associates' salaries because "we are committed to be at or near the top of the market once we understand that's what the market is paying."

Does the WilmerHale tipster have a right to be disgruntled? Well, avarice may not be the simple cause: For the academic year 2005-06, students from public university law schools owed an average of $54,509. Those from private schools: $83,181.

Even though a job offer at the end of the summer is pretty much a lock for everyone, summer associates still work the social and professional angles with the eagerness of college freshmen rushing a fraternity or sorority. They lunch with the firm's lawyers to sniff out which high-profile cases they can get in on, or they cozy up to partners who need help with research for a lecture or an article.

But some concede that the events can be awkward -- especially if they're not genuinely interested in a private practice career and are more into freeloading.

"A lot of them are just interested in having a good time, because when you're a summer associate, you don't get much real work," said AboveTheLaw's Lat. "When they show up for real, there will be plenty of work, so they might as well enjoy it now."

Indeed, it is a summer filled with glass-clinking and schmoozing. "Summers" sail on the Chesapeake. They go-cart in Virginia. They bowl at Strike Bethesda. They get taken out for lunch by mentors. Or they head to the company suite at Verizon Center.

"It's like grown-up summer camp," said Felicia Carter, 25, a Steptoe summer associate, riding in a bus on her way to the Kennedy Center for dinner and the "Phantom" performance. "My friends are jealous."

But many summer associates say working on real cases -- as opposed to luxuriating in all the freebies -- is what makes the summer compelling. "I've worked on a tax project, a litigation project and a government contract project," Carter added.

Steven Schulman, a partner at Akin Gump, said that a few weeks ago, he e-mailed the summer associates asking if anyone wanted to help him file a petition to free an asylum seeker detained in New Jersey on allegations that he had provided financial support to a Sri Lankan rebel group. It was a Thursday night, and the associates were at the Christian Heurich mansion -- "The Brewmaster's Castle," the historic Victorian mansion of the late German beermaker -- near Dupont Circle.

"They must have been on their BlackBerrys, because I got three e-mails before the party was over," Schulman said. "So I had one summer associate write up the motion for preliminary injunction, another figured out how you file a lawsuit without using the plaintiff's name and the third one revised the entire petition. I was getting e-mails from them past midnight."

The high-priced work of the summers ultimately paid off. Schulman said that government prosecutors told him recently that their client will be released any day.