There are many occasions where the general population of our law school class will freak out: open memo time, a week before major papers are due, and of course, during finals. However, there is a special period of panic reserved solely for second years, known as On-Campus Interviews (OCI). The OCI’s are for those who are seeking positions with Calgary law firms. Partners from the various bigwig firms will descend on the law school to interview potential summer students, and the second years will be lining up to kiss their asses. I had no particular burning interest to work at a Calgary law firm, but because I am a lemming, I submitted my applications, got a few interviews, and waited to see what would happen. Lo and behold, I got a job: it will go down as the best thing that could possibly have happened to me in law school.

Getting a summer job with a firm in Calgary is like winning the lottery. I assure you, never in your life will you receive such a salary for the amount of work you will actually do. If a summer student were to break down their salary, and divide what they were paid by their hours worked, it would amount to a minimum of $500 an hour.
There will be those who claim to not want a law-based summer job, because “they need a break from all the thinking of law school.” This statement is ridiculous. What is learned in law school has precious little applicability to the real world of lawyering (unless, of course, you have spent your law school career going for coffee and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, because summer students do a lot of those things). You first go for your morning Starbucks break, usually taken within fifteen minutes of arriving at the office. This break should last approximately 45 minutes to one hour; it will take that much time to go over what everyone watched on television the night before. This coffee break is followed up by checking/writing email, making your morning internet rounds, and reading celebrity gossip (I highly recommend www.laineygossip.com; A friend got me hooked on it, and the gossip and pictures cannot be beat). Then, there is time for a solid half hour of work before lunch. Lunch must last a minimum of an hour; this is the least acceptable amount of time. A Calgary summer student will eat, preferably at a swanky downtown restaurant, hopefully with someone more senior than you so the tab will be picked up; the student must then go for a walk down Stephen Avenue to check out the talent. If the weather is sunny, this walk must be supplemented with a walk to Eau Claire, to check out the talent leaving the YMCA scantily clad for their lunchtime jog. The afternoon will consist of much of the same, until you knock off for the day around 3:30 (don’t feel guilty about it, you worked hard today).

I don’t mean to imply that there won’t be work. Like law school, when there is work, you toil until it is finished. This work will mainly consist of search summaries and due diligence, if you are in a corporate area; these things initially sound scary, but are extraordinarily simple and mind-numbingly boring. If you are working in litigation, you will either be doing transcript summaries or writing memos. First years, embrace your memo; learn to love it. Over the course of the summer, I would estimate I wrote fifteen memos, on topics as wide-ranging as sufficiency of service to restrictions of barbeque placements for apartment complexes. The questions you will be asked to research are completely bizarre, and often don’t have an answer. One of my fellow summer students handed in a memo to a partner and humbly admitted that he simply couldn’t find the answer. The partner responded with “Yeah, I knew there was nothing on this, I just wanted to know what you would find.”There is a coping method for situations like these: it’s called alcohol, and as a Calgary summer student, you will consume a lot of it. Every firm function has free liquor

. As a summer student, you are a mere peon: a disheartening number of people at your firm know your name, and still fewer care what you do, so you are free to imbibe to your liver’s content. Summer in Calgary revolves around the Calgary Stampede. During this time, you will wear a cowboy hat and jeans to work for ten days. You will also frequently leave to get plastered on company time. The beauty of this system is that if you leave with a senior member of the firm, or if there are enough summer students to achieve quorum, this time can actually be registered on a time sheet – and you get paid for it.
So do not hesitate in applying for Calgary jobs come OCI time. For many firms, the interview to become a summer student is the real articling interview, and an extremely high number of summer students promptly become articling students at their firms. The perks will range from free transit passes to large tuition credits. Trust me: summering in Calgary is well worth the effort of sending off a few resumes.

By: Anna Pickerton

[Ed Note: Be aware; this is also known as the Bait and Switch. They get you in for 4 months and take it easy on you; and then we you sign your life over to them, that’s when they pile on the work. There are no more 3 hour breaks for lunch. Only 3 hour breaks for sleep.]