Asking you because you're the Central Lawvlr Focal Point - would you be willing to/is there anyone who would be willing to talk to me about competitiveness between summer law students/articling students and how to handle it? I'm finding that the other students at my summer job play a lot of mind games and I've never been in a situation this tense before
I never really experienced this personally, working in a small firm that only ever had one articling student and rarely had a formal summer student. I did, however, hear that this was not terribly uncommon in mid-sized / larger firms in the Toronto area.
At the end of the day, staying out of the fray is easier than trying to “win” in that type of environment; the people who let themselves get too caught up in identity and status politics become known as *that guy* and it can affect them in their future careers - not even at the firm, but in the legal community in general.
One of my friends used to deal just by texting me and venting (ie. “God you will never believe what she tried to pull this time”) because it helped her vent her feelings out without actually engaging in the politics itself.