Summer Associate Experience

Wiggin and Dana's 2009 Summer Associate Program included 4 students who completed their second year of law school.

Before extending offers for summer employment, the firm makes every effort to accurately predict the number of first-year associates it will need to hire the following year, so that our summer associates will not feel that they are competing against one another for a limited number of positions.

The overall objective of the Summer Associate Program is to give each law student a realistic view of what it would be like to work at Wiggin and Dana on a regular basis. Wiggin and Dana hires summer associates with the expectation that they will all have productive and satisfying summers and will return to Wiggin and Dana as first-year associates.

While the Summer Associate Program is based in the New Haven office, summer associates regularly interact with lawyers from all offices. If a summer associate has an interest in ultimately working in a particular office, we will take steps during the summer to ensure as much contact as possible with that office.

Each summer associate is paired with a partner and associate mentor. While both mentors are available to help orient the summer associate and educate him or her about the firm, the partner mentor serves the added role of reviewing all written work that the summer associate produces. Of course, in addition to this review, the assigning partner evaluates the summer associate's work.

Summer associates are encouraged to speak to the work coordinator and partner mentor at the outset of and throughout the summer about practice areas that interest them. The work coordinator collects assignments from partners in all departments and distributes them to the summer associates with this in mind. Summer associates work directly with the lawyer or lawyers who generate the assignments.

Summer associates are invited to regularly scheduled associate professional development programs. They also attend weekly meetings at which department chairs, firm management and attorneys from various practice areas speak about interesting, ongoing matters and the type of responsibilities that associates in those departments and practice areas are able to assume.

We strongly encourage summer associates to attend court proceedings, depositions, client meetings, pretrial conferences, closings and other events outside of the offce.

The Summer Associate mock trial program gives each summer associate a chance to:

• prepare and examine a witness
• give an opening and/or closing argument

Several social events allow our summer associates and attorneys the opportunity to get to know one another outside of the office. In addition to The Mighty Wiggin and Dana's weekly softball games, our summer events have included a clambake, deep sea fishing, an evening at the theatre, a New York Yankees baseball game, cooking class, golf outings and cocktail parties at partners' homes, an international smorgasbord, and participating in the New Haven International Arts and Ideas Festival.

Wiggin and Dana summer associates have worked extensively on pro bono matters.

Click here for more information on the firm's pro bono activities.

Wiggin and Dana offers a split summer opportunity for one 2L to spend the first five weeks at the firm and the remainder of the summer at a public interest organization approved by the firm.

In 2009, summer associates who completed two years of law school received $2,115 per week.

First year associates in the New Haven and Hartford offices receive a salary of $110,000. As a cost of living adjustment, first year attorneys in the Stamford office receive $130,000.