Summer Associates Explore Practice Areas During Litigation and Corporate Weeks

Hands-on training and real work assignments are hallmarks of Winston’s summer associate program. This year we introduced Litigation Week and Corporate Week to further enhance law students’ exposure to our wide range of Practice and Industry Areas and the ways in which the firm’s learning culture aligns with these areas. Additional training opportunities offered throughout the summer include a writing workshop, mock deposition, and mock trial for Litigation and a mock M&A negotiation for Corporate.

Litigation Department Co-Chair Steve D’Amore held a videoconference for all summer associates on June 10, providing an overview of the broad and interesting opportunities Winston offers to aspiring trial lawyers. “The one thing you will always have as a result of your experience at Winston during the course of summer and life as an associate is that you will learn about the way we do business, about our commitment to legal excellence, and our passion for client service,” he told the students.

He explained that litigation associates at Winston spend their first two years working on varied matters with a focus on trial skills from Day 1. In year three, associates are asked to affiliate with a particular practice group within the Litigation Department to receive specialized training, including master classes and other signature opportunities for those who demonstrate an affinity for trial work. Steve went on to say that lean staffing on cases means junior associates at Winston have early opportunities to step up and take on more responsibility as soon as they are ready.

Throughout Litigation Week, summer associates had additional opportunities to interact with and hear from Winston attorneys in a number of our specific practice groups. Those in the Chicago office attended a presentation featuring leaders from the firm’s antitrust, appellate, complex commercial, intellectual property, international arbitration, labor and employment, securities, and white-collar litigation areas.

It is also an exciting time to be a deal lawyer at Winston, Corporate Department Chair Dom DeChiara told the summer associates during a June 18 videoconference to kick off Corporate Week. “As a result of our strategic investment in this area, corporate attorneys now make up half of the firm, and transactions work has generated record revenues in the last three years,” he told attendees. Our diversified and integrated corporate department offers junior associates broad and interesting opportunities to represent public and private companies, private equity and investment funds, leading financial institutions, funding sources, investors and emerging companies on a range of transactions.

Dom encouraged the summer associates to take on varied assignments with many different people – through the firm’s best-in-class staffing platform as well as by proactively reaching out to assignment partners – to learn about the range of corporate specialties and find out what works best for them. Corporate associates also affiliate with a particular practice group in their third year. “We have given significant thought to making sure summers and junior associates understand how the due diligence or other piece of the deal they are working on fits into the bigger picture,” he said.

Summer associates in Chicago also attended a career night to learn from and ask questions of attorneys in the firm’s capital markets/securities, finance/lending, fund formation, M&A/private equity, employee benefits, environmental, real estate, private client services, and tax practices. This event included a reception for summer associates to network with attorneys from both the Corporate and Litigation departments.

In addition to providing a deeper dive into Winston’s practice areas, these trainings will be helpful to our summer associates as they begin to consider areas of interest and specialization down the road. Please visit our North America Summer Associate Program page for more information.