<p>I'm a few years removed from knowing anyone who has obtained a summer position with the big NYC firms and have been asked by a couple of friends who have kids who will be participating in Toronto OCIs in the fall for summer 2012. Can anyone here give me an idea of what the going rate is currently? Are these still, generally, the highest paid positions available for summer? Thank you for any information you can share.</p>
<p>I would recommend going to NALP</p>
<p>[NALP:</a> DLE - Directory of Legal Employers](<a href=“http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_quick.asp]NALP:”>http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_quick.asp)</p>
<p>you can do a quick search for different NYC firms. They will give you all of the demographic information including salaries for 1l and 2l summer employees.</p>
<p>For NYC big firms, the market summer associate salary is $3,076.92/week.</p>
<p>Thank you both for being so helpful.</p>
<p>“is $3,076.92/week.”</p>
<p>spits out water. Law school is still a good deal. 24-30k for 8-10 weeks? That’s more than what some people make in a year.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you can get the job. And some firms allow you to work up to 14 weeks. That’s roughly $43,000.</p>
<p>Edit: And yes, it’s probably still that much after-tax.</p>
<p>How could it still be that much after tax?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>1) Typically, a student who is a summer associate will have a gross income of $30,000-$40,000 for the year. While, on a weekly basis, $3,076 is a lot of money, when you look at the gross income, you’re still in the lowest tax bracket.
2) Students who are summer associates are also… students. They have to pay graduate school tuition (be it out of pocket or via loans). This entitles them to certain tax credits.</p>
<p>Just received my refund this week. $6,500. It’s going to be a nice spring break.</p>
<p>Yeah, but the tax credits aren’t going to reduce your tax burden to zero.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When you’re making only 30-40k a year, they do.</p>
<p>What credits are you claiming? The lifetime learning credit is $2K. You can’t claim the credit and a tuition deduction or another credit. That’s not even going to cover your federal income tax, let alone medicare, social security, state and city taxes.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the so-called “standard deduction,” and deductions for anything that’s placed into a traditional IRA.</p>
<p>In any case I assume FH was rounding and not being literal – that it’s roughly the same after tax.</p>
<p>Give or take, you know, a few thousand dollars.</p>
<p>The following is a little tedious but was good for me to learn.</p>
<hr>
<p>Let’s say a student worked roughly ten weeks for $30,000. Deducting a $5000 IRA contribution and $5700 for the standard deduction, his federal income taxes work out to about $1640.</p>
<p>The Lifetime Learning Credit is $2000, so your **federal income taxes will be zero<a href=“not%20negative,%20since%20LLC%20is%20non-refundable”>/b</a>. I presume this is what FH was talking about.</p>
<ul>
<li>*</li>
</ul>
<p>You still have state taxes and payroll taxes. I’m not totally sure which deductions apply to those, and I’m also not sure if you can take the leftover $360 from the Lifetime Learning Credit and apply it to payroll. It looks to me, though, that NYS would be about $932 (applying NYS brackets of 4-5.9% to $19,300) and that payroll taxes would be $811 (4.2% * $19,300) minus the $360 from the LLC.</p>
<p>So total taxes on $30,000 would be $1383.</p>
<ul>
<li>* </li>
</ul>
<p>EDIT: NYC itself has an income tax. In this case, it appears to be roughly $560. So the total would work out to $1943.</p>
<p>FH is probably an NYS resident, but many NYC summer associates are not. In that case, I believe they’d pay whatever income taxes are due in their home state, and NYS would credit those taxes towards their $932 bill. If the home state was higher – I suspect NYS is one of the higher ones – then I think the NYS bill would come out to $0. Not sure how NYC handles things.</p>
<p>BDM is right, though non-NYC residents don’t pay city tax. No matter what state you reside in, though, you have to pay NY State tax if you’re working in NYC over the summer.</p>
<p>Also, since NY State over-withholds just like the Fed does, you get a nice hefty refund there. My $6.5k includes that.</p>
<p>Payroll taxes are going to be higher than that; SS alone is 6.2%. And virtually no summers contribute $5K to an IRA, since for most of them that means having to borrow $5K more to pay for school.</p>
<p>I applied the 2011 payroll tax rate of 4.2%.
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/your-money/25money.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/your-money/25money.html</a></p>
<p>Contributing to the IRA reduces your taxes but increases your loans; not sure exactly how the interest balances out. I certainly contributed the full $5,000.</p>
<p>This thread has gotten way longer than it should have. I lost little money to Uncle Sam from the summer. H&R Block did my taxes. I now have $6,500 in my bank account (less what I had to pay to H&R). Move along. No bigs.</p>