Nickel and Dimed.

Our firm aspires to be a top-notch national practice. Leaving aside the fact that we lack offices in at least two major markets, the clearest proof that we’re not is the way our summer associate program has been administered. One word. Cheap. I hate getting calls from our recruiting coordinator about entertainment expenses, and I don’t think there would be the same hullabaloo if I were at Kirkland, or Sidley, or whatever. There’s no real point to it—she bitches a bit, I mumble something in my defense, and they end up reimbursing me for the bill all the same. There’s actually a “no shots” policy. Ridiculous. A handful of weeks ago, one of the junior associates got a little out of hand at Rockit and ordered three rounds of Patron for our sizeable group. He did that because he “knew” our waitress, and she was smoking hot. To top it all off, this associate left a $250 tip. Now we can’t expense shots. Dumbass. Which begs the following question: How are we supposed to have sex with the interns—I use the pronoun “we” loosely, this is actually not a personal concern—if we have no carte blanche authority to buy them lots of alcohol and fancy food? Isn’t that the whole point of the summer?