Professional Development

We take great pride in the quality of our legal work and believe that superb legal skills can be built only through a combination of broad work experiences, sound formal training by experienced practitioners and strong mentoring relationships. Our professional development department provides excellent support and includes, among other professionals, six lawyers for whom your development is their full-time responsibility.

Mentoring Programs

When you join us, you will enter a mentoring program designed specifically for you. Our New Associates Program is dedicated to your professional development and integration into the firm. It plays an important role in helping you learn to navigate the firm and your department, and ensuring that you are on track to become a successful lawyer. Mentors are senior lawyers from a mix of practice areas. In addition, each new associate is teamed with a peer mentor who provides practical advice and guidance.

After your first year, you will participate in the following:

A benchmark program that provides a clear outline of the skills and types of experience you should typically gain as your career progresses. You will be assigned a partner who helps to ensure that you receive the appropriate variety of assignments to achieve your career benchmarks.
An evaluation program that involves a mentor who will ensure that you will receive detailed, balanced reviews every six months and have a chance to discuss the evaluations fully.
An upward evaluation program that asks you to give senior lawyers feedback. Through training and “upward” evaluations, the firm puts substantial effort into developing the ability of senior lawyers to train, lead and motivate more junior lawyers effectively.

Training Programs

As a new associate, you will receive both general and practice-specific orientations. The general orientation introduces our practice and offers concrete advice about working effectively. Topics are wide-ranging—from managing your practice, to ethical issues, to the firm’s business strategy. You will also attend programs designed to help integrate you into the firm and develop team-building skills.

Beyond the general orientation, you will attend practice-specific programs that focus on specialized skills and knowledge. For example, associates involved in contested matters participate in an extensive weekly training program that examines all aspects of litigation practice—from the filing of a complaint through trial, appeals and settlement. Associates also role-play a mock deposition and argue a motion in a courtroom-like setting. For corporate transactional lawyers, a first-year university covers an extensive range of issues associates encounter in their day-to-day practice, including securities laws, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, corporate tax, stock option plans, corporate drafting and venture capital financing. Other practice areas conduct similar programs.

WilmerHale also offers a Learning-by-Observation Program that encourages more junior lawyers to look for “learning-by-observation” opportunities beyond those that arise in the normal course of their work, and encourages senior lawyers to create these opportunities. These opportunities arise both in the matters on which the junior lawyer is working and in any other matter in which the firm is involved. We believe our lawyers can learn a great deal by watching more experienced lawyers when they conduct meetings, engage in negotiations, make presentations and arguments and, more generally, undertake all the interactions that require experience and judgment to handle successfully.

Progressively more advanced training programs that focus on sophisticated areas of practice will continue throughout your career at the firm. For example, we offer a broad array of cross-disciplinary programs and workshops on topics such as ethics, oral-communication skills, finance, client development, managerial skills and negotiating. We also encourage our lawyers to attend professional development programs outside the firm.

Counsel and Partnership

Not all lawyers joining us plan to conclude their careers here, and we take pride in the important positions our alumni occupy in government, business, academia and the public interest sector. For those who build their careers within the firm, associates are first eligible for promotion to counsel after 6 ½ years and to partner after 8 ½ years. The firm’s evaluation process offers clear guidance about partnership prospects and advice about the developmental steps that might improve those prospects. The firm also offers advice about career planning, both from those inside the firm and from outside career coaches.

For highlights of our Vault profile, click here.
For the fourth consecutive year, WilmerHale ranked in the top 20 in the renowned Vault Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms. Vault's guide analyzes and ranks the most prestigious law firms as determined by law firm associates from around the country. We were particularly proud to hear that our associates raved about the training at WilmerHale. One midlevel called it "excellent" while a newcomer said it was "extensive and very impressive."

Jaime Klima
Associate, Securities
Washington

"The firm is fantastic about setting you up with a variety of mentors at various levels who each have different responsibilities in terms of guiding you."