Associate Law Firm Position

This is placeholder content, Theresa will provide the content for eac of these pages. An associate may be a junior or senior attorney, but normally does not hold an ownership interest in the firm even if associated with the firm for many years. First-year associates are entry-level junior attorneys and are generally recent law school graduates in their first year of law practice.[1][2]

Generally, an associate has the goal of being made a partner in the firm, after a number of years gaining practice experience and being assigned to increasingly important and remunerative tasks. At firms with an “up or out” policy, associates who are repeatedly passed over for promotion to partner may be asked to resign. Some firms will also have “non-partner-track” associates who, though performing satisfactorily as employees, for whatever reason, will not be promoted to partner.