Every fall, tens of thousands of law students compete for a small number of coveted summer associateships at the country’s top law firms. The stakes are high: getting one of these rare internships virtually guarantees full-time employment after law school. The salaries are unbeatable, six-figure sums that catapult young students to the top 5% of household incomes nationally and are often quadruple of those offered in other sectors of legal practice. These jobs also open doors to even more lucrative employment in the private sector as well as prestigious judiciary and government roles. For these reasons, employment in top law firms has been called the legal profession’s 1%.
Research: How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on Your Resume
Research on the effect of social class on hiring found that elite law firms’ hiring practices discriminate strongly based on social class but that, surprisingly, an advantaged social background helps only men. In the studies, attorneys viewed higher-class candidates of either gender as better fits with the culture of large law firms, with some attorneys even steering lower-class candidates to less prestigious sectors of legal practice, where positions tend to be more socioeconomically diverse. But even though higher-class women were seen as just as good “fits” as higher-class men, attorneys believed these women were the least committed to working a demanding job of any group (including lower-class women). The findings confirm that the social class people come from greatly shapes the types of jobs they can attain, regardless of their achievements. There are ways to combat this discrimination, however: applicants can ditch the extracurricular activities on their resume, eliminating cues about their backgrounds. Hiring managers can help keep women in the pool by blinding evaluators to first names or substituting with initials.