$3,100 a Week for Summer Associates
Big Washington, D.C., law firms are paying summer associates as much as $3,100 a week while offering plentiful perks.
The Washington Post writes about a dinner with a “Masters of the Universe ambience” atop the Kennedy Center, attended by summer associates at Steptoe & Johnson.
Competition for top law grads is increasing, the Post says, pushing salaries higher for summer associates like Steptoe & Johnson’s Amy Jenkins. She’s making $2,700 a week in her first serious job since working as a camp counselor.
“I definitely feel like a grown-up for the first time,” she told the newspaper.
Associates weren’t as grateful at WilmerHale. An anonymous tipster complained to the blog Above the Law that summer associates were making a mere $2,800 a week at the firm’s Boston office instead of the $3,100 they deserved.
It is “somewhat embarrassing,” the associate wrote, “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.”
