We Just Put Away Our Whites . . .

But it’s never too soon to start thinking about next summer:

Each autumn, Portfolio Boys and Girls descend on New York’s top law firms, applying for jobs as summer associates. Who can blame them? Summer associates earn over $3,000 a week, work reasonable hours on interesting projects, and lunch at Jean Georges. And just as certain sleeve cuts are all the rage at Fashion Week, some law firms are “hot” — and some are not. Having interviewed with firms exactly 10 years ago, I was curious: Who is this fall’s “It” Firm?

As it turns out, the answer depends on what type of student you are and which crowd you hang with. Here’s what I learned from my decidedly unscientific survey of law student opinions about law firms.

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According to Rob, a 2L at NYU, one firm that’s in demand this season is Davis Polk & Wardwell. Why? “I’ve heard they have good-looking associates.”

Some things never change. When I interviewed a decade ago, Davis was already known as a bastion of beauty on aesthetically challenged Lexington Avenue. It was the firm of choice for the prom queen and king of my law school class — the editor in chief of the law journal, a luminous doll-like beauty with a vast family fortune, and her Abercrombie-handsome future husband. They were joined at Davis by enough comely Asian females to cast Memoirs of a Geisha.

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Lifestyle types also still gravitate toward perennial favorites Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, known for cultivating a quirky, pleasingly academic atmosphere, and Debevoise & Plimpton, which relentlessly works the whole “we’re Big Law but we’re nice” angle. The firm Web site even features MP3 clips recorded by current associates, who gush over Debevoise and use the word “collegial” in every other sentence. (But query whether these testimonials sound a little like tape recordings from hostages to their families.)

Debevoise recently topped The American Lawyer’s “A-List” ranking of leading law firms for the fourth consecutive year. But word on the street is that some associates aren’t happy campers. Maybe it’s because of all those “MJW Specials”: massive internal investigations of major international corporations, reeled in by Mary Jo White, former U.S. attorney for Manhattan and rainmaker extraordinaire. While such long-running and lucrative matters are great for Debevoise, they’re not much fun for associates — who get shipped away for weeks at a time, to review documents in a warehouse in Munich.