Amid shrinking law school classes, law firms are looking for ways to capture the profession's young talent. And this year, while firms provided their summer associate classes with the usual cavalcade of dazzling social events—like Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton's outing to the Belmont Stakes or Paul Hastings' trip to the ESPY Awards—it was actually Big Law's efforts to give millennial would-be lawyers attention, work and mentorship that made the biggest impact, according to roughly 3,900 second- and third-year law school students who responded to The American Lawyer's annual Summer Associates Survey.

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Many of these soon-to-be lawyers, who spent 10 weeks in the 92 firms included in our survey, pointed to the substantive work and training they received as the most memorable part of their summer in Big Law.