http://blog.qiken.org/archives/2005/09/when_2404_is_63.html

Now I did the math (very hard for me, but hey, this is important) with $2800/wk compared to $145k being paid monthly.

$145k equals $12,083.33 per month (repeating, of course)

Assume you start May 15 and work till Aug 15. That's 3 months. $12,083 * 3 = $36,250.

May 15 to Aug 15 is 13.4 weeks. $36,250 / 13.4 = $2705.22

Like I said, I'm bad at math so somebody tell me if I screwed up somewhere. In the meantime, make sure all your summer drinks are on your Paul Weiss friends.

EDIT: Better math here: http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&mc=50&forum_id=2#5142691

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5099397)

"This is actually useful information for people who are trying to decide between two firms with few distinguishing characteristics. You might try to use money to flip this coin, and choose the firm paying $2404. Don't do that; you'll make more if you go with $2400."

Many people get caught on this problem. They're going to decide on something, maybe it's the office that has nicer views, or the practice group ranked a bit higher on Chambers, or the recruiting assistant a bit cuter than the last. Or maybe it'll be that the firm will pay you $90 or so more per week than the firm down the street.

Sure, you have no useful skills, but are you more useless than your buddy at Paul Weiss or O'Melveny NY? If somebody else can make $2800/wk with no useful skills, why shouldn't you?

Anyway if you see my Cali posts, you'd see that there's probably not too much chance of my making either $2705 or $2800. Maybe I'd actually feel better if the gap between me and the NY summers was only $100 or so. But of course I'd rather we just all made the $2800.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5099735)

If there were more info on benefits and perks, I'd be interested in getting that too. Probably the most useful part of Vault (which isn't saying much) is where they list those perks. Too bad they don't do it in any systematic, comparative way.

Look, you're going to choose your firm on some random set of criteria or another. Maybe it's Vault ranking, maybe it's your impressions of an arbitrary self-selecting sample of associates and partners. Even so, many people are going to end up with two or more firms that seem to have the same balance of pros and cons, and in that case I don't see anything wrong with picking a firm that pays you almost $100 more per week.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5124797)

Also, you can't rely too much on how good a firm is in a particular practice area. Many 2Ls are going to have a hard enough time guessing what, 5 years from now, is going to be important to them in terms of their work and their career, and what they want out of a firm. A group that is ranked high might still provide a lousy associate experience. There might be other firms with practice areas that are "lower ranked" but provide more opportunities to work directly with clients and get more responsibility on cases. And of course, sometime during the summer or afterwards, you may decide (or be forced) to join a different group altogether.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5139401)

I asked somebody who summered at S&C last summer who confirmed that they paid based on the month, so summers ended up making less than they expected.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5123972)

anyway, someone explain it to me. if SullCrom is paying 6041 biweekly, doesn't this end up being 3020 a week? Now, that number is over market- compared to Cleary's weekly number. But after you account for the fact that the months are longer, and the problems with the monthly method, this lowers the 3020 down to 2890, which, like I said, is market. So isn't everyone getting paid the same now? Hasn't Fiver's dream been realized?

Or is it that the 4.33 is REGARDLESS of the fact that summer months have more days? Ahhhhhh! I get it now. Thank you XOXO, I am enlightened, but I think they are trying to deal with this with the start / stop days. The must, since we can work any # of weeks we want (over 12, I think), so they must have some weekly system to account for people who work an odd number of weeks.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5136745)

Cleary is 2788 a week. If you work 14 weeks, (may 15 - august 18th), you get 39,032.

If S&C is doing a "biweekly" system, you should theoretically get 7 of these payments. The month thing shouldn't matter because it is being doing "biweekly" not "twice in one month". So 7 * 6041 = 42,287.

OK, so if we assume that must be wrong, S&C must be doing a "twice per month" payment plan. So the issue here is the last week of may going into june, and the last day of july going into the first week of august. What happens to these weeks? Do they count in the 1 payment you get for your may and the one you get for your august work? (i.e. you only get payed for 2 weeks of the 3 you work) Or do you get half payments for eachof the extra weeks, meaning that you get 7 total "bimonthly" payments? If you only get 6, then S&C people are screwed - they would get 36,246 for the summer, a cool $2,786 less than cleary!

SullCromTroll said at some point that S&C may have fixed this problem by having people start on May 18th instead of May 15th (to make up for the 3 days ending in may)- but what about august?

I'm so confused...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5137620)

The basic point of this thread (and Fiver's page) is that firms that use these numbers are basing it on a monthly cycle. Most likely, both Cleary and S&C will pay you on the 15th and 30th (or 31st) of every month. The two payments will add up to $12083.33. This is fine if you work for the whole year, since $12083/month will eventually get you to $145k. But for the summer, when the months are longer, you will be making quite a bit less than the summers at Paul Weiss who are being by the week.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5139291)

2788 * 4 = 11,152

6,041 * 2 = 12,082.

Isn't S&C paying more than cleary?

Also, compare S&C to Paul Weiss for the entire summer.

14 weeks * 2800 a week = 39,200

7 payments (as I fleshed out in my previous post) * 6041 = 42,287. But I guess you are saying that there are only going to be 6 payments and no partial payments (those extra weeks just disappear, and the first and last payment will actually cover about 3 weeks as opposed to 2 weeks). In that case, you only get 6 payments = 36,245, which is nearly 3k less than paul weiss.

What I'm trying to say is that the firm might give an additional half payment at the end to make up for the extra week when you add up the extra days in august/may-june, and the fact that you start on a tuesday at S&C would make up for the lost day in July. That would be an extra $3020, and leads to the salaries between PW and S&C being almost identical. Of course, I don't think anyone on here knows whether they actually do this or will do this. The 'biweekly' language might suggest that they have corrected this problem.

Either way, $3k is a lot more than the 1k fiver was suggesting, and it seems like Cleary pays even less than that, so I'd like to see someone respond with math rather than rhetoric.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5139855)

I'll do the math more fully later (after class) but I'm sure you can figure it out. Look at the calculations in my original post where I conveniently assumed that you get paid on the 15th and 30/31st of each month and that you'll start on a 15th and end on a 15th. If you want to throw in extra days, pro-rate them on a monthly basis. Note that this means a day is worth more in a 30-day month than in a 31-day month.

And in case you think, "well maybe S&C doesn't actually do this," I refer you again to my prior post, where I said I asked a previous S&C summer who confirmed this is how it works.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5139987)

So I have 3 questions:

So we are saying that Cleary + S&C summers make 3k less than Paul Weiss people?

Are we sure Paul Weiss actually pays per week?

Is S&C calling it "biweekly" a new thing, and if so does it suggest that they might add a partial payment at the end, and set up the start /end dates, so you end up getting exactly the same?

What I would really love to see is some total comp numbers from an S&C associate and a Paul Weiss associate last summer who worked the same number of weeks. I'm sure an S&C associate did tell you that, but I'm not sure he/she knows for sure that Paul Weiss actually paid more.

Like I said, 3k seems like a LOT more than the 1k from last year, so I was asking for math just to double check (i'm hardly a math person). I'm not sure its enough to choose Paul Weiss over S&C, but it would certainly be a valid consideration, especially if you planned on doing PI fulltime after you graduate.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5140176)

Is it possible that Paul Weiss says it pays $2800/wk but actually uses the monthly system? I don't know about Paul Weiss specifically, but I asked another 3L who summered at a firm that paid $2400/wk, and he received paychecks for $4800 every other Friday. This is different than what the S&C summer said. (The place where I summered paid me on the 15th and 30th of each month also.)

You also have Fiver's original page, where she compared her paycheck to her boyfriend's, and made the claim that firms that claim they pay $2404 are on the monthly system, and firms that claim they pay $2400 are on the weekly system. She's reiterated this point a couple of times, so I assume she hasn't received evidence to the contrary.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5140428)

OK, I think on that system you get 6 payments from S&C (you are only there for 6 15th / 31st payments), and something like 13 weeks and 2 days from PW. My math mistake was giving PW a full 14 weeks, but clearly those days after the 15th of august would be made up in a partial payment by S&C on august 31st.

6* 6041 = 36,242

13 * 2800 = 36,400 (which is 158 higher, essentially this is the extra $12 per week between 2800 and 2788) + whatever they would get for those 2 days, something like 1,120 (2800/5 * 2). The fundamental difference in comp, then, turns out to be those two extra days which are counted as part of a "week" at PW, whereas they vanish at S&C as part of a "biweekly payment".

So in that case, you'd get $1,278 extra.

OK, I see this. BUT, realise that this is only like 2 extra days of work + $12 extra per week that we already knew about. SO, if SullCromTroll is right and they actually start on Tuesday the 16th (and lets say they end on monday the 14th instead) - this would seem to solve the problem because they are working 2 less days than PW people, no?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5140621)

If you're going to assume S&C pays on the 15th and 30th/31st of each month, then the work period I should have used would be May 16th to August 15th (one day more than your hypothetical). The S&C summer makes $36,250 during this period (your calculation, without the rounding). The Paul Weiss summer makes $36,960 in this same period, for a difference of $710.

Now Fiver's hypothetical was working from May 16th to August 31st (I don't know if all firms will let you do that; my firm probably wouldn't.) That's another payment cycle for S&C, and comes to $42,291.67. For Paul Weiss, this is $43,680. In this case, the difference is about $1388.

In summary:

May 16 - Aug 15

- Effective weekly salary: $2746

- Difference from PW: $710

May 16 - Aug 31

- Effective weekly salary: $2711

- Difference from PW: $1388

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5142691)

Start date is the 15th, which surprises me- I thought it was the 16th. I don't know remember when the end date is. Bottom line is Hazelrah / Fiver are right - we work a couple of days pro bono. I don't think this was on purpose, I just think they didn't want to change their billing system.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5148585)

call me crazy, but when i divide 125,000 by 52 i get 2403.846. when i round that to the nearest whole number i get 2404.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5139343)

But that doesn't seem right. Note that $2812.50/wk * 4 weeks * 12 months = $135k. So this is actually the same as well SullCrom says "$6041.66 biweekly" -- SullCrom doesn't mean $3000/wk, and Jones Day doesn't mean $2812.5/wk (in fact they'll pay a day or two less than the firms at $2600/wk).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=361369&forum_id=2#5605139)