Is associate a good title?

The modern economy, in all its complexity, has thousands of job roles. It takes a specialized vocabulary simply to describe them all. This can cause confusion when people use the same terms to refer to different roles, or to different ranks of the same role. Watch out for the words “associate” and “staff.” Their meanings vary considerably, depending on which industry or economic sector you look at, and can confuse you by implying a relationship between them that doesn’t exist in some cases but does exist in others.

The modern economy, in all its complexity, has thousands of job roles. It takes a specialized vocabulary simply to describe them all. This can cause confusion when people use the same terms to refer to different roles, or to different ranks of the same role. Watch out for the words “associate” and “staff.” Their meanings vary considerably, depending on which industry or economic sector you look at, and can confuse you by implying a relationship between them that doesn’t exist in some cases but does exist in others.In the corporate cultures of the private sector, the word “associate” usually appears as a qualifier to a job title. It indicates a lower rank than that of employees whose job titles don’t include it. This occurs with junior employees such as “associate office assistants,” middle employees such as “associate managers” and very senior employees such as “associate vice presidents.” Separately, a few companies call all of their low-ranking employees “associates” instead of something like “workers” or “employees,” as a way to imply that they value these employees. Meanwhile, the word “staff” when it appears in corporate culture usually refers to an in-house employee as opposed to a temp worker or an independent contractor. Sometimes it refers to a full-time employee as opposed to a part-time one.

In Law

Is associate a good title?

In the legal profession, the difference between staff and associate attorneys lies mainly in the prospect of career advancement. Staff attorneys mainly do work in support of more senior attorneys. In particular, they spend a lot of time sorting through legal documents to pick out the ones that pertain to a specific case. They don’t have good prospects for career advancement and don’t get paid as well as their associate counterparts, usually working on a contract and earning an hourly wage rather than a salary. In contrast, associate level attorneys constitute a core part of the law firm and have much better advancement prospects. Although they do plenty of document review, they also get the chance to confer with clients and argue in court. Associates tend to get paid a salary rather than an hourly wage, and may be in line to be promoted to “partner,” one of the senior members of their firm.