You can judge a law firm by assessing what resources it’s willing to devote to your professional development. We want exceptional lawyers, so the training and development we provide is equally exceptional, we would contend unmatched. Informal day-to-day mentoring with peers and partners, substantive general and practice-related sessions taught by leading experts and Milbank partners, intensive off-site conferences with associates from around the world, and our latest innovation—a first-of-its-kind business and law program in partnership with Harvard. At every stage, we’re laying the foundation for the next phase of your career.
Cultivating Sophisticated Legal Minds
We’re burnishing our reputation as a first mover in development by teaming up with one of the world’s most preeminent academic institutions. Milbank@Harvard continues legal-skills training while giving lawyers a broader underpinning in business and finance. During four consecutive years, each associate from every Milbank office worldwide is sent to Cambridge for a week long training program, taught on campus by Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School faculty with the assistance of Milbank partners. Associates begin attending in their third year and come back for more advanced work through their seventh.
Translate Theory Into Practice
We teach you what law school doesn’t. From the moment you arrive and over the course of your career, Milbank provides several levels of professional development with programs designed for the overall litigation and transactional groups to those on a micro level within specific practices. And as you progress, we make sure you’re adding soft skills to your tool kit, from client relations and business development to negotiation, leadership and management.
“At the off-sites, you get skills training in a casual, more relaxed environment. You meet the rest of your classmates from Milbank offices around the world and talk with partners that you might not work with normally. The conferences give you a chance not only to learn about the law, you also get a real sense of the firm’s business, who our clients are, where we’re going and how you might fit in.”
--Sam Badawi/Midlevel Associate/New York
“The session on managing up, down and sideways at the fourth-year conference was a big wake up call. What stuck with me was ‘You’re now a midlevel, take initiative, take ownership. Your role has changed and your work product needs to reflect that. How do you delegate? How do you give constructive feedback?’ I started implementing the lessons immediately on litigation where we produced 200,000 documents. I realized that making junior associates better is another part of my job.”
--Elizabeth Virga /Midlevel Associate/New York