Upon arrival at Willkie, both new and experienced associates are assigned a partner to serve as their Career Advisor to help smooth the transition into Firm life, provide guidance, and assist with navigating the work assignment system.  Each new attorney is also assigned an Associate Liaison to help with integration and to provide practical tips.

Fourth-year and more senior lawyers are assigned a partner advisor as a supplement to existing, informal mentoring relationships.

The Women’s Professional Development Committee has established cross-departmental associate mentoring circles to provide a framework for increased interaction among women at the Firm.

A team of senior associates is “on-call” to answer junior associates’ questions related to ongoing projects and to provide career guidance. The Advisory Network also hosts periodic meetings to discuss current matters and practice area developments.

This orientation program includes a comprehensive overview of Firm economics, presentations by the co-chairs of the Firm, and department-specific boot camps intended to provide new associates with the background needed to start their careers.

This program covers a range of topics from the business of the Firm to management workshops and business development. It also offers department-specific skills-development training, including an advanced negotiation workshop for transactional attorneys and interactive workshops on trial practice, deposition skills, legal writing, and oral arguments for our litigators.

This program is geared towards sixth-year and more senior associates and provides insight into the partnership process and an in-depth look at the Firm’s marketing and business development efforts.

As an adjunct to all of this, associates also benefit from a comprehensive evaluation program. Associates are evaluated in the spring and fall of each year, and meet with their assigning partners at least once a year to discuss their performance. As part of the review process, associates are asked to complete an Annual Report to reflect on their own performance and to establish professional goals for the coming year. Associates also have the opportunity to provide upstream reviews to partners, counsel, and senior associates.

• Salary of $180,000 per year for first-year associates
• Lock-step associate compensation system
• Competitive bonuses
• Four weeks of paid vacation each year
• Salary advance to incoming first-year associates
• Reimbursements for moving expenses, bar review courses, bar examination fees and bar association dues

• 18 weeks paid (and 18 weeks unpaid) parental leave for primary caregivers
• Subsidized health and dental insurance (including spouses and children)
• Life and disability insurance
• Fitness allowance and subsidized health club membership
• Emergency day care center
• Attorney lounge with cappuccino machine, breakfast, and afternoon cookies
• Free private banking at Citibank or Chase
• Technology allowance
• Independent Counselors on Call, a resource for attorneys to have private sessions on a confidential basis with experienced career counselors. The career counselors help the attorneys develop action plans to achieve their professional goals.

Willkie recognizes that attorneys who have strong commitments to the practice of law and are engaged in parenting may, at times, find it desirable to adjust or reduce their work schedules. The Firm has an equally strong commitment to providing alternative work schedule arrangements for attorneys at all levels, from junior associate to partner, in appropriate circumstances. For our attorneys who work on a flexible or alternative schedule, there are designated attorneys charged with creating opportunities for exchanging ideas and experiences related to successfully managing career and life issues.

• Willkie has participated in an externship program at MFY Legal Services for more than 10 years through which, on a rotating basis, the firm maintains a full-time attorney permanently on assignment at MFY. This highly popular externship is one of the oldest and most successful of its kind among large New York firms.  In 2012, the firm was honored by MFY for its overall dedication and longstanding support for the organization.
• In 2008 the firm established a similar externship with Her Justice, at the Queens Family Justice Center. Like the MFY externship, the new Her Justice externship is a rotating position for a period of four months during which the extern is given a full case load in Family Court and Supreme Court, including hearings and trials on family law issues.
• For a number of years the firm has incorporated one and two-week public interest externships into our Summer Associate program, as well as offering numerous opportunities to work on pro bono matters in-house throughout the course of the summer.

We work closely with a number of legal services organizations that link lawyers to needy individuals and institutions serving the disadvantaged.  We also have an active practice representing asylum seekers and other persons with complex immigration problems.  Among these organizations are:

• The Legal Aid Society
• Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
• Her Justice (formerly inMotion)
• MFY Legal Services
• The Innocence Project
• NY City Bar Association Refugee Assistance Program

Additionally, we act as general counsel to a number of organizations providing services for the poor, including Women in Need and City Harvest.

In the three years following the World Trade Center attacks, our lawyers devoted thousands of hours to the assistance of WTC victims, obtaining monetary compensation for eligible clients and providing advice on bankruptcy and trusts and estates matters.

Our London office was recently named  a legal partner for Advocates for International Development (A4ID). Through A4ID, Willkie provides pro bono legal advice to clients in development organizations and other sectors working towards poverty eradication and sustainable development. 

We have also worked on a number of major special projects and litigations, including:

• our work, in collaboration with Bloomberg, on more than a dozen clemency petitions as part of the Clemency Project 2014, an initiative addressing the large number of federal prisoners who, if sentenced today under current sentencing laws and policies, would likely have received a substantially lower sentence for their nonviolent crimes;
• our representation of Habitat for Humanity, on a completely pro bono basis, in the securitization of mortgages to raise millions of dollars for the construction of new homes for the needy;
• our service, pro bono, as one of the principal outside counsel for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts;
• our filing of amicus briefs in the Second Circuit and Supreme Court on behalf of a detainee charged with terrorist-related crimes in United States v. Padilla;
• our work on behalf of  the Sylvia Rivera Law Project’s Medicaid campaign, which is striving to provide healthcare access to low-income transgender New Yorkers;
• our representation of 92 amicus plaintiffs from 15 states  in a case before the United States Supreme Court, regarding the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage; and
• serving as counsel for the Innocence Project, which is acting as an amicus curiae in a lethal injection case  before the United States Supreme Court.

Finally, many of our lawyers have spent large portions of their careers in various areas of public service, including one as Governor of New York, one as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one as President of the Bar Association of the City of New York, and numerous others in various departments of government.  One of our former partners, Chester J. Straub, serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while another is a bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of New York.  In short, we have a long history of commitment to and investment in the many spheres of public interest work.