I’m back just in time for the celebration of the independence of our nation. The last couple of weeks have been busy and rewarding. It is hard to believe it but my summer program is half way over. I had my mid-summer evaluation this past Tuesday and was pleased to be reassured that I’m doing a decent job as a summer associate. This made me think about the difference between law school and law practice and appreciate the importance of a systematic feedback in law firms. Unlike law school where you are entitled to feedback for all the work you do, law practice is a business and highly time-sensitive. Everyone is trying to squeeze that extra half hour out of the day so as well-intentioned as everyone is, voluntary evaluations are rare. Because I believe that getting feedback is the only way a young attorney can learn the trade and learn it well, I really appreciated the fact the summer associates get evaluated twice during the 12-week summer program – once at the six-week mark and once more at the end. Getting this feedback not only helped me become more in tuned with my strengths and weaknesses but also made me think about which practice areas suit my interests and skills.

In addition to the mid-summer evaluation, we also switched offices. I moved from the 30th floor to the 15th floor and am getting to know an entirely different practice area and group of attorneys. Although we have no formal rotations in terms of our assignments, it is nice to be able to “live” on different floors and get a flavor of different practice areas.

To celebrate our apparent success in the summer program, my firm took all the summer associates and their guests to the Symphony Hall (5-minute walk to the law school) for dinner and a Boston Pops Concert. I had never had the opportunity to visit the historic Symphony Hall or experience the Boston Pops so I was completely blown away by how much fun it was. The theme of the concert was “Take me out to a ball game” so they played a lot of baseball related music and even had a former Red Sox player doing a poetry reading. All in all, it was a great conclusion to the first part of my summer associate experience.