The Allure of Flat Hierarchies

• Author: John P. Box Jr.
• Pages: 37-50

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The Allure of Flat

Hierarchies

Millennials Think Horizontally,

No t Ve r t ically

During the summer of 2006, life was good. I was a summer associate

at a large international law firm in Washington, DC. This was before

the belt-tightening following the 2008 financial meltdown. Associates

and partners took me and my fellow summer associates out to two-hour

lunches on an almost daily basis; we went go-karting together; we went

to Nationals’ baseball games together; we spent evenings at partners’

homes; and we vacationed at the luxurious Greenbrier resort with our

significant others—all on the firm’s dime. We pulled in the equivalent

weekly salary of a first-year associate but for a fraction of the work and

a lot more of the fun. My fellow summer associates and I joked that the

firm hierarchy went, from bottom to top: junior and mid-level associ-

ates senior associates counsel income partner equity

partner summer associates.

Joking aside, everyone knows that law firms maintain well-defined

hierarchies from staff and associates up to partners. After a few days

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