It's the middle of June and today for the first time I took summer associates from my firm out to lunch. I should be ashamed that it's taken me this long.

Lunching summer associates is a time-honored practice at big city law firms. When I was a summer associate, I spent two and a half months here, and only twice did I fail to have the firm pay for my lunch in some way when I didn't want it to (that is, a couple of times I purposely told the firm to leave me alone and I had a sack lunch in the park with a friend). We take the summers out to the nice restaurants of the neighborhood, take an hour and a half or so, and enjoy a great meal. And the firm pays for everyone.

When I remarked to my fellow first-year and the two summers I was with today that this was my first summer lunch all summer, one summer asked me, "Too busy?" I said, "Busy and lazy." When I haven't been caught up at the trial I'm involved in, I've just not had the gumption to call up some summer I don't know and ask him or her to lunch, although that's exactly what I'm supposed to do. The other first-year associate said that he had been on a lot of summer lunches already because, in contrast to my being busy/lazy, he's "cheap."

That hurt.

I consider myself very cheap. At least as cheap as the next guy. Yet here I was, eating my own peanut butter sandwiches (peanut butter is free in the firm's kitchens) and Healthy Choice TV dinners on the days when I'm not in court, and my peer is out having roast duck for free. Although it doesn't cost me much for bread and jelly, it does cost more than what I got today, and today I'm fuller.

So a new goal: take summers out to lunch more often. I'm not going to say once a week or anything crazy like that. But I need to be cheaper by charging my sustenance to the firm.

After all, everyone knows that summer lunches are just a big junket to make the summers like the firm--why can't the attorneys take advantage as well?