The third week felt a lot more real than the first two to me - real in the sense that I felt like my days looked a lot more like the days of a first associate. I have been working on my first two assignments for the past 1.5 weeks and am nearing the end for both. For the past three years, Bingham has put aside its formal rotations for its summers and instead adopted a more flexible approach where each summer can work on assignments in different practice areas simultaneously. This allows the summer associates more opportunities to follow a case or deal from beginning to the end. So my first two assignments were to write a legal research memo for an employment discrimination litigation and to provide general assistance in a private equity deal. Both projects have been very rewarding experiences to me so far but each with its own challenges.

With respect to the litigation project, I felt pretty comfortable with the assignment because I have written many research memos for school, for a judge, and for an impact-litigation firm and I have taken a course in employment discrimination in law school. The challenge for this project is to correctly judge the scope of the project or to put it more simply--to know when to stop. Unlike first year associates, I was not faced with a strict deadline so with a sincere desire to produce my best work, I probably spent a lot more time than I should on the project. I definitely came away feeling like I need to work on my efficiency. After all, this is a business and nobody wants to pay me for 20 hours worth of work for a simple memo. The corporate assignment, on the other hand, involved a very steep learning curve for me. Law schools, unfortunately, are not very business-orientated. We learn about plaintiffs, defendants, causes of actions, burdens of proof etc and not about memorandum of understanding, stock certificates, and debt-asset ratio. As a result, I felt pretty useless when I first met with the assigning attorney and the partner on the deal. I quickly picked up a couple of text books on mergers and acquisition and am now beginning to understand the general ideas behind an acquisition. Also, Bingham has weekly training for summer associates to help us understand each of the Bingham's key practices areas. After the first corporate practice session, I felt like at least I could begin to see the forest. Even though I have a lot less experience in corporate law, I find the practice area and the idea of business deals fascinating. In a way, it's like taking a law school class in an area you have close to zero knowledge of. It's challenging and completely exhilarating.