Training and Career Enhancement
I really appreciate the importance that Latham & Watkins puts on training—it's as important to the summer program as the recreational activities, and it continues throughout your career here. Latham pours a ton of resources into formal training programs such as Summer, First, Third and Fifth Year Academies, and even a New Partner Academy. The academies are incremental and follow you through the associate ranks, hitting on key issues that associates encounter at those points in their careers.
For example, First Year Academy covers how to be an effective associate at Latham. By their third year most associates have already focused on a practice area, so Third Year Academy provides greater substantive training as well as advice on dealing with the transition from junior to mid-level associate and from being supervised to supervising others. It even covers how to get started on business development. When I attended Third Year Academy, I was really impressed. The presentations were targeted directly to third year associates and discussed things we could do in our day-to-day lives to effectively start the transition to mid-level associate. The academies really give you guidance on every aspect of your career here.
I am now a fifth year associate and serve on our Training and Career Enhancement (TACE) Committee, and can see first-hand the care, effort and resources that Latham pours into training programs. And it's not unique to the academies. The TACE Committee plans events such as our deposition and trial advocacy training programs for litigators as well as events for our corporate, finance, tax and environmental attorneys.
One of the cornerstones of the TACE program are the hour-long training sessions and video presentations held in each office throughout the year, known internally as our core, advanced and interdisciplinary TACE curricula. These programs are open to all Latham attorneys and even provide CLE credit. These sessions have been extremely important to me in my development as an attorney as they have helped me build a fairly substantial knowledge base and equipped me with tools to succeed in my career. There's also a Mentoring Program for new associates, which is a nice complement to our formal training. The point is, Latham puts a lot of effort into career development, and people like me and my colleagues on the TACE Committee try to make sure there's something for everybody through every stage of their career.