Jones Day - Careers - Associate Life

Lawyers who join Jones Day share our commitment to high-quality service and dedication to clients, with the goal of building their own unique contribution to our practice. In return, we are equally committed to providing the training, professional development, and client responsibility, consistent with increasing levels of experience, that will enable our associates to become outstanding lawyers.

We encourage all of our lawyers to find a successful balance between the demands of client service, community involvement, family, and personal interests. We believe that the great diversity of our lawyers' backgrounds, interests, and talents reflects their success in enjoying a full life while also engaging in one of the world’s most challenging and stimulating law practices.

The sophisticated practice we enjoy and the complex nature of our clients' needs can require extraordinary effort and dedication by our lawyers, sometimes under challenging circumstances and formidable deadlines. But these demands, when they occur, are inherent in providing our clients with high-quality legal services and are not a consequence of artificial, internal objectives. Associates are not expected to mark time or to show up on a weekend just to be visible. When our lawyers determine how to spend their time, common sense, rather than a spirit of competition, prevails.

Our Managing Partner has emphasized that while we intend to keep our salaries competitive, we will not follow competitors that have linked salary increases and bonuses to billable-hours requirements. We believe that rewarding the mere accumulation of billable hours can not only result in unhealthy competition among lawyers, but also detract from efficient client service. Contrary to misconceptions about practice in firms within our peer group, the average annual client billable hours of Jones Day associates is in the 2,000-hour range.

To learn more about what it's like to be an associate at Jones Day, click on the links at the left.

In 1997 I joined Jones Day as a summer associate because my instincts told me it was the place for me. Nine years later, those instincts are still proving true. Jones Day is a wonderful place for young litigators to learn their trade.

One of the things I like best about Jones Day is the variety of personalities you find here. There is no 'cookie cutter' model for success. Instead, you have the freedom to be who it is that you are, without any pressure to adhere to a standardized organizational norm.

Mentoring, both formal and informal, is fundamental at Jones Day. It is grounded in the Firm's strong commitment to excellence and service - a commitment that begins with training its junior lawyers, and fostering their professional, as well as personal, growth.