Memo to young law students: Remember that trapeze class, karaoke bar outing, Segway tour of Manhattan, and the trip to the New York Jets training camp you took this summer while working at big-name law firms?

How you behaved at those events were clues to your character and talent—and to your job prospects.

"You really want to know what the personalities are like," said Brian Manoff, a senior recruiter at Pittleman & Associates, an employment firm that places lawyers at law firms.

Scores of young law students have just completed their first summer jobs at the firms they hope to join when they graduate. They discovered that life in the legal fast lane is not all briefs and statutes.

Thanks to law firms' annual rite of passage known as summer programs, it's also laser tag, cooking lessons with a Food Network staffer, casino night, and a round of Quizzo with the senior partners.

With the social events, Manoff said, "the more outside the box the environment, the more the individual shows his true self."

Through the summer programs, the law students, who have typically finished their second year of study and have one more year to go before graduating and taking the bar, are supposedly getting their first taste of the real world.

So the law firms use the programs to decide whom they want to hire upon graduation. Based on their three-month stints, many third-year law school students are now receiving job offers to start full-time when they graduate next spring.

Call it young lawyers gone wild—but the fun is serious business.

"There's certainly a place for absolutely brilliant people, but if the firm is structured where every single lawyer needs to multitask, that firm will be looking more at social skills," said Lynne Traverse, a recruiting and professional development manager at Bryan Cave. "We consider the summer program an 11-week to 12-week interview."
 
With the carnival of events, law firms aren't striving to keep potential hires from viewing the profession as billable-hour drudgery, with pressure-cooker deadlines and long hours into the night.     

Rather, the firms want to know if in addition to stellar grades at a top-notch law school, a potential hire also has the ability to mingle with clients, charm partners, and shine in social functions.

"One of the important parts of the summer program is determining whether we can place a summer in front of a client, in a social or business context," said Traverse. Through the summer social events, "You really can separate people out."

Partners, including the most senior members of the firms and the partner in charge of hiring, typically attend most of the summer events, which often means catered dinners at a partner's home.

The big law firms with hundreds of partners and New York offices tend to really put on a show.

At Davis Polk, one of the nation's largest firms, this year's summers in New York offered trapeze lessons, a softball game at Shea Stadium, and a welcome dinner at the Plaza.
 
At Morgan Lewis & Bockius, summers were trotted out to karaoke bars, played laser tag, rode go-karts, and took a tour of Manhattan by Segway.

At Proskauer Rose, a large firm with one group of lawyers focused on sports law, they attended the N.B.A. draft and the New York Jets training camp.

Erin Fogerty, a second-year student at New York Law School who worked in Proskauer's New York office this summer, said that young summer lawyers also took a cooking class at a professional chef's midtown Manhattan apartment and savored wine during a tasting at Astra, a trendy event space in midtown Manhattan.

All the events "added a bit to the stress," said Fogerty, who is 26. "You knew that it wasn't fully intended for you to just enjoy yourself, but for the firm to get to know you—are you a nice person, fun, interesting."

One second-year student who worked at Shearman & Sterling this summer called the program "the most fun I've had probably ever." The summers went to amateur night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and attended a cocktail party at the United Nations. They also learned to play craps and poker, at a casino night at the firm.

"It is stressful and it isn't stressful," said the student, who did not want to be named for fear of offending his future employer, who this month offered him a job when he graduates next spring. "Obviously you're trying to get a job."

With the tightening economy and some law firms even laying off partners, young would-be lawyers face a more competitive job market. That has prompted most to put their best foot forward this summer.

"Every year, there is a story or two of a summer who behaves really badly," said one young law student who worked at a prominent Washington firm. He also declined to identify himself, his school, or the firm. "But this year, everybody seemed on their best behavior."

Still, the law student questioned whether fun social events really gave students a taste of the reality of law firms, where associates are typically asked to put in long hours and weekends in back-breaking legal drudgery.

Even so, different law firms have different cultures—and the summer programs are one clue to a firm's ethos.

Cooley Godward Kronish, a West Coast-based firm, took their summers rock climbing in Santa Cruz, California. "Once there, summer associates, associates, and partners put their fear of heights to the test and enjoy an exciting day of climbing," the firm's website says.

In recent years, Bryan Cave's office in Irvine, California, treated summers to a white-water rafting trip—over class IV rapids.

"We're not going to do that again," Traverse said. "Some people got freaked" when they got chucked over the side by violent water.

On the calendar this year instead was a limousine cruise through Napa Valley for wine tasting.