A guide to what summer associates should (and should not) do with their money

Welcome to the fourth post of The Invested Counsel—thoughts about financial planning for young lawyers.

In honor of summer associate season, I’ve decided to spend the next two posts on how summer associates should handle their money. In this post, I’ll go over some guidance on how that summer associate money should be spent. And in next week’s post, I’ll explain why I ignored that advice.

In 2010, I was a summer associate in the New York office of a firm called Dewey & LeBoeuf (R.I.P.; it collapsed in 2012 amid mismanagement and charges of fraud). During that summer, I made $30,358—the most money I had ever made, by far. In contrast, in the year before law school, I spent a year building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Dallas, where I made $14,100 for the entire year.

(Side Note: I was able to look up how much money I made by going to the Social Security Administration's website (http://www.ssa.gov/). Social Security keeps track of all of your wages over time (and thus all of the money on which you have paid payroll taxes) since you started working. This is because your Social Security benefits are based on (among other things) how much money you made over your working life. Once you start working, it’s good to check your Social Security account periodically to make sure that everything looks right. Also, if you have been working for a while, it’s interesting to see how much you have made over time. Sunrise, sunset.)

Biglaw firms usually pay summer associates at the first-year payscale (which I’ll assume is $225,000 for firms that have not moved to the new Milbank scale), so most summer associates are likely to make around $43,000 this summer (i.e., $4,326.92 per week, for 10 weeks). Some firms are also giving out essentially signing bonuses to 1Ls, nominally to allow their hires to do public interest work, but with the goal of keeping them loyal to the firm through law school. Those can range from $25,000-$50,000.

This is a lot of money. But what should you do with it?

1. Pay for housing. Your biggest expense will likely be housing. For current (2026) summer associates, that decision has already been made. But for future summers, you should live as modestly as you can. Just because you are working at a fancy firm doesn’t mean you should feel the need to live in a fancy apartment. It’s a lot easier to live in a crappy place when you are young—so take advantage of that capacity now, before you get older.

If you can avoid paying for housing, that’s great. I did that myself when I was a summer at Dewey. But it was tough. I lived in a windowless studio apartment in the basement of my father’s dental office, across the New York City border in Nassau County. I took the subway from midtown to Jamaica, and then a bus from Jamaica across the city border. Summer in New York is hot and humid, and the bus was almost always packed. My grandmother lived in that basement apartment for part of the year, so when she was around, I would contend with her underwear around the laundry, and would sleep on an air mattress in reception. Not great.

2. Take advantage of what the firm is doing, and avoid spending beyond that. You should not spend all of your summer associate income over your summer. If you are a traditional summer associate (i.e., young, single, non-parent), your needs are pretty limited—you need a place to live, some food to eat, and clothes for the office. You will be busy at the office, or at summer events, or lunches or dinners. There’s not going to be too much time for you to be doing other stuff during your summer, which means you shouldn’t feel the need to spend too much on food or entertainment during the summer.

Instead, take advantage of what the firm offers. For example, when I was at Dewey, each summer associate was assigned a mentor, and each mentor-mentee pair was given a $600 budget to do things throughout the summer. When I met my mentor, the first thing he suggested was that we use it at a strip club. This being my first day in an actual law firm setting, and not knowing if this was a real suggestion or a joke or a test or a trap, I gave a bewildered smile and said nothing. After taking pity on my awkwardness, he made another suggestion. Instead of spending the budget on various meals and drinks and events over the whole summer, we would blow the entire $600 on a single lunch at Le Bernardin. Which we did, and which was worth it.

3. Make sure you have an emergency fund in cash. After your expenses, make sure to keep a fair amount of cash set aside. This cash should be in something safe, but earning some interest. You can use either a high-yield savings account, or a money market fund in a taxable brokerage account. You should not just leave it in your checking account, since you won’t earn any interest in your checking account, and inflation will eat away at it. On the other hand, you should not invest it in the stock market or bonds or any other sort of volatile investment. This is money that you will be using over the next year or two; stability is paramount.

For normal working individuals, the basic financial planning rule of thumb is that one should have 3-6 months of non-discretionary living expenses in an emergency fund. But that doesn’t really make sense for a 2L summer associate returning to back to law school in the fall. Instead, I think you should think of your cash in two buckets: the money that you will need to get you to your first paycheck, and an actual emergency fund. Think about what money you will need after leaving law school (i.e., preparing for the bar, taking the bar, potentially a bar trip, moving to a new city), and have that set aside and ready for you. Then add some amount as an emergency fund over that amount to take into account unexpected or higher than expected expenses.

What if I have money left over?

If you have money left over from the first two steps (for example, your firm gives a signing bonus), you have some additional choices.

4. Pay down debt. The main goal for most law students should be to pay down debt. If you have credit card debt, pay that down first. If you have student loan debt, either pay down your highest-interest debt, or avoid incurring more debt as a 3L.

5. Invest. If you don’t have any debt, and you have sufficient cash, the next reasonable option is likely to start investing. Since your total annual income is likely to be low, consider investing in a Roth (i.e., after-tax) account, since your marginal income tax rate will likely be much lower as a summer associate than at almost any other time in your career.

6. Don’t get life insurance (unless you absolutely need it). For a summer associate, or a young lawyer, the default answer to “should I buy life insurance” is “no.” Instead, you should buy life insurance only if you actually need it. And generally the only reason you need life insurance is if there is someone out there that will depend on your income for their own economic safety. If you have a partner, or a child, or a parent, or another family member with special needs that will be left in a bad situation if you were to pass away unexpectedly, you should consider getting life insurance. If you don’t have those people in your life, you likely don’t need life insurance.

Once you start working at a firm, you will see that there are lots of life insurance salespeople who will try to convince you to buy all sorts of different life insurance policies, for all sorts of other reasons. Don’t do it. Only buy what you need, if you need it.

What I did with my summer associate money.

This is all excellent advice, and any summer associate would be smart to follow it. Next week, I’ll explain why I ignored it, and what I actually did with the bulk of my summer associate income.

That’s all for now. Have a wonderful week.

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