Mara Smith, an aspiring lawyer who just took the bar exam, said her summer associate experience set her apart from classmates. But it wasn’t the legal work that did so.

“Everybody at every law school knows how to write a memo, knows how to do basic research, knows how to file a motion,” said Smith, a graduate of Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law. “It’s that exposure to the business development portion of it that I think shocks a lot of people when they get into firms.”