|
Hiring Clients' Children for the Summer
July 7, 2007 One of the great challenges for law firm administrators is what to do with clients' children who have been “placed” with the firm for the summer. Some firms enforce a prohibition on make work programs for clients’ kids but, typically, it is up to the office administrator or HR manager to find work for lucky students. In speaking with administrators on how to deal with the issue we received the following advice:
- Get the Firm’s Management Committee or Board to approve the number of summer positions, the required qualifications, what work they will be hired to perform and their compensation. This provides the administrators with some support when partners become “pushy” about a specific candidate.
- Don’t give clients’ children make work jobs where they just sit around all day. You don’t want bored students relaying their displeasure with the firm to the client. Big projects are best, e.g., stripping files before they go to storage or erasing hard drives on old computers.
- Make a big deal of confidentiality during their orientation. Remember everything you say that day will be repeated to the client at dinner so make it a good message.
- View the summer jobs people as being in a “mini summer associate program.” Plan some fun time for them but at a much less ostentatious level than for the law students.
| 
