One lawyer calls it a "mating dance." Another likens it to a "sorority rush." Still a third calls it "the war for talent."

Actually, it's the summer associate program, a time when Atlanta's prestigious law firms are filled with smart, eager law students angling for a chance one day to work like serfs and become wildly successful.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Smith, Gambrell & Russell intern Jonathan Waldman, standing in front of the door, works with other interns in a Hands On Atlanta service program. Summer interning with big Atlanta law firms is a good and lucrative way to get your foot in the door.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Liza Carter (left) and Asha Jackson, with the law firm of Carlock, Copeland and Stair, work on a community service project at Atlanta Chapter Middle School.

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It's a time where top-ranked students are wined and dined, paid an average of $2,500 a week and closely monitored to see if they have the right stuff to thrive in those buttoned-down corridors.

Jonathan Waldman, a rising third-year student from the University of Miami law school, is trying to prove his mettle at Smith, Gambrell & Russell, one of Atlanta's oldest firms. On a recent afternoon, the 24-year-old was researching the terms and conditions of a contract for a memo he's writing for a lawyer.

The former business major enjoys the work and is still not fully comprehending his weekly $2,200 pay.

"This is the first time in my life I've had disposable income," he said with a smile. "This has been a whirlwind. You work all day, they take you out to dinner. You can't say it's tough, with all the good food."

Like most summer associates, Waldman, a Top 20 student, was picked for the position last fall entering his second year of law school.

The process was frenetic and competitive: He applied to more than 20 firms, interviewed at 17, got callbacks from seven and offers from three. He knows firms hire nearly 90 percent of their summer associates but said nothing is a sure thing with the economy like it is.

He seems bemused by the whole affair.

"These important jobs, they base [the hiring] on one year of law school," Waldman said. "That's crazy, although I'm not going to complain. It's scary to think about: We're only 23 and have a career path there for us."

'Value on collegiality'

Tammy Patterson, president of the NALP Foundation, an organization devoted to legal recruitment and career development, agrees with Waldman.

Paying that kind of money to untested students, she said, "is rather ridiculous, but it's part of the recruiting game. It's keeping up with the Joneses. It's important to the firms to have students from good schools and from the top of their class because the clients expect that."

The cost of bringing in summer associates, training them and then later hiring them at $145,000 a year is expensive.

The whole process of bringing a young lawyer along until they are profitable — about three years — costs a firm about $300,000, Patterson said, and that's without factoring in their salaries.

The firms have little choice. They must keep the pipeline stocked with young talent. Nearly seven in 10 of students hired by large firms leave within five years, NALP figures show.

Some are burned out by working 70-hour weeks to meet annual quotas of 2,000 billable hours. Some use the big firms as résumé fodder before moving on. Others hang in for a while to pay off student loans.

But staying pays off, Patterson said: "Statistics show lawyers who come in with the summer associate program and stay with the firm are more successful."

A case in point is Liz Price, a 1985 summer associate at Alston & Bird and now the partner in charge of recruiting at the firm after 20 years of litigating.

"There's something about getting them in early and getting them to buy into your culture," said Price, who is overseeing 57 summer associates. "We place a high value on collegiality."

Alston & Bird has a deliberate method of getting to know its recruits, using a mixture of social immersion and work. The firm's "summers" have taken a weekend bus trip to the beaches of Florida, have attended Outward Bound, Braves games, concerts at Chastain Park, as well as countless dinners, lunches and happy hours with partners.

The thought is that the "off time" allows students to ease up and show the firms' evaluation teams who they really are. "You have some very lively conversations in the six hours on the bus," Price said.

Still, summer associates are smart enough to keep any hint of a wild child in check.

"You don't want to be known as the summer [associate] who got ridiculously drunk at summer events," said Leena Sidhu, a 26-year-old University of Georgia law school student from Marietta and a summer associate at Smith, Gambrell.

Sidhu has enjoyed her time at the firm. A poster with photos of a scavenger hunt — where frolicking summer associates visited iconic Atlanta places like Krispy Kreme, the Varsity and Oakland Cemetery — adorns an otherwise bland office. But she knows this is a short respite from the real world.

"None of us are under any illusions that this is what it will be like," said Sidhu, who spent time after graduating from college working as a paralegal and a teacher.

Asked if she is ready for 60- and 70-hour workweeks, she smiled and said, "Absolutely."

Like most top students, she wants a "good balance" between work and life, something that firms have been trying to recognize.

Sherri Knight, the director of recruiting at Smith Gambrell for 23 years, has seen a change in aspiring lawyers.

"They're looking for more balance," she said. "With the millennials coming up, it's them, their lives, their jobs. They are so mobile that if you don't have it, someone else will. With technology, they can do whatever they want, wherever they want."

Firms used to teach dictation, Knight said, but young people's computer skills are so great they can type a memo faster than reciting it into a recorder.

Knight said the firm uses its attorneys in a "good cop/bad cop" routine to evaluate the summer associates.

"They want a lot of praise and instantaneous feedback," she said. But "you have to be careful how to deliver it. ... I think they are brighter or more confident than those in the past. They've been hearing that all their lives."

She said the structured lives of young people, whose parents shuttled them from activity to activity, means "you have to motivate them more, push them more."

It was a point repeated by NALP's president, Patterson.

"These are the kids who grew up with soccer moms and rigid schedules," she said. "They expect to work hard but expect a lot more direction."

At 31, Derek Neilson, a trained structural engineer and summer associate at Alston & Bird, is a bit older than the "millennials," who were born after 1981.

Having performed seismic calculations for a nuclear storage facility in his old job, Neilson is no stranger to responsibility.

"I've always been a very driven person. I can balance things," said the University of Virginia law student, whose wife is finishing her pediatric residency. They are also expecting a baby.

Neilson is representative of an increasing number of law students with technical or medical backgrounds.

He's considering the growing legal field of intellectual property.

He shares the confidence seen in most of the aspiring lawyers.

"When you start out, you think you can conquer the world," he said.