You Are Not Being Graded on a Curve

Or Why Your Summer is Not An Episode of "Survivor"

Today’s issue of Standout Summer Associate comes from Mike Dockery who is the Director of Product and Chief Legal Officer at Marveri, a LegalTech company that offers an AI-powered platform to help attorneys quickly organize, understand and analyze large groups of documents. Mike was formerly a Corporate / M&A Partner at Morrison & Foerster.

As someone who was involved in my firm's summer program at the partner level, one piece of advice I'd give to summer associates: Do not buy into the myth that you need to show extreme levels of ambition or treat your summer like a game of Survivor where you need to out-scheme your fellow summer associates.

If you're creating a toxic environment, partners will hear about it (little spreads faster among the partners than a juicy rumor about a summer who is being overly cut-throat towards their fellow colleagues). It is unfortunately not that uncommon to come across summers who seem to think they're being graded on a curve, and the best way for them to get ahead is to undermine their fellow summer associates. I promise you this is not the case.

No question that firms want to see summers take initiative, but they also understand that they're hiring future colleagues and teammates. Even if we can be relatively sure that someone's ghoulish behavior will never be directed at ourselves, partners still aren't interested in having to sort out associate conflicts or have their work product be undermined in some misplaced game of extreme career ambition. And chances are that if you're willing to create issues for your fellow colleagues to get ahead, you're also going to be just as scheming in your interactions with your future managing attorneys.

The line between "go-getter" and "psychopath" may be more blurry than we would like, but in general if your display of ambition involves stepping on someone else, then you're probably doing it wrong. The kind of initiative that firms are looking for is someone who takes ownership of their work and looks for ways to contribute without being asked. What they're not looking for is someone who tries to figure out how to undermine their colleagues.

So don't buy into the media portrayals of law firms as a vicious shark tank - it can be a difficult job, yes, and there's definitely going to be a lot of big personalities around, but nevertheless firms are looking for good teammates first and foremost, and someone who is obviously trying to climb by stepping on others doesn't send off the right vibes.

Keep standing out.