Why Milbank sends its 4th-year associates back to school (video)
David Wolfson, partner at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy and chair of the firm’s professional development committee, talks with Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia about the Milbank@Harvard program.
The week-long course at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School takes mid-level Milbank associates through a wide range of professional development courses. The associates begin the course in their fourth year, then repeat it in their fifth, sixth and seventh years, Wolfson explains.
“We felt that law schools, while excellent, do not provide essential knowledge that you need to be a good lawyer in the market that we have today, and that it was necessary for law firms to do that,” says Wolfson. “We needed them to be business savvy, finance savvy, accounting savvy, understanding how to manage and run deals for them to be really effective and for them to do the type of work that they need to do.”
Wolfson discusses Milbank@Harvard’s origins, why it’s “crucial” that the classes don’t begin until fourth year, and how they manage to pry the Blackberries out of their mid-level associates’ hands for the duration of the program.
See the video interview here.
Related articles:
ABA Journal Legal Rebels: “Back-to-School Boss: Mel Immergut, Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy”
ABAJournal.com: “Milbank Spends $5.8M a Year on Biz-School Classes, Finds ‘Retention Sweet Spot’”
