Life as a Summer Associate at Crowell & Moring

Working | Learning | Giving Back | Playing

The diversity in our summer program reflects the diversity of our firm at large. Here, we’re all individuals with varied backgrounds and interests. We want summer associates who take the practice of law and client service more seriously than they take themselves, who will contribute to the life of the firm, and who share our sense of responsibility to the community.

Our summer associates work hard and play hard, too. We take the time to get to know you. Our primary goal is to let you in on what it’s really like to be a lawyer here. Through the work we assign and the training we offer, as well as our "Public Interest Fellowships" and social events, you’ll return to law school with a thorough understanding of who we are, what we do, and how we do it. And we hope you decide to join us when you complete your studies. After all, "home grown" lawyers are key to the success and richness of our practice.

Working
Most of our junior associates come from our Summer Associate Program. In it, we take the time to get to know you. And we give you the time to get to know us. Our primary goal is to provide a crash course on life as a lawyer here. We want you to go back to law school knowing who we are, what we do, and how we do it. And we hope you'll join us after you finish your studies.

Work for summer associates includes mostly short-term projects that will allow you to experience as many practice areas and as many lawyers as possible. Some examples of recent projects:

Researching and assisting in the preparation of a motion to dismiss on behalf of a federal official in a civil litigation by former Iraqi detainees incarcerated at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Interviewing witnesses in Mississippi on behalf of a pro bono client, a mentally retarded man on death row, whose case tests the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling.
Assisting in the preparation of witnesses for SEC testimony.

Many summer associates also participate in our Public Interest Fellowship program. Past summer associates have split their time between the firm and the ACLU, Children's Law Center, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and The Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia, among others.

Summer associates have the opportunity to participate in workshops and seminars on such topics as The Law Firm as a Business and Negotiations Training. In addition, the firm offers Summer Associates the opportunity to sign up for Live Events throughout the summer. Live Events are real-world activities like court hearings, client meetings, depositions, presentations and negotiations that Summer Associates may attend in order to observe Crowell & Moring attorneys in action. Live Events are meant solely as a complement to a Summer Associate's work experience. We believe that you can learn a tremendous amount in a very short time by seeing our lawyers apply the law.

Learning
Our summer associates have an opportunity to participate in a wide array of workshops and in-house seminars that provide substantive training in an informal setting. The firm's training programs have included workshops covering topics such as legal writing and the fundamentals of taking depositions. Samples from training programs offered to summer associates in recent years include:

Negotiations Training - Summer associates spent half a day in a negotiations skills workshop. Following a brief introduction to the topic, summer associates were tasked with participating in "live" collective bargaining sessions. The underlying facts for the sessions were drawn from real negotiations handled by our firm's Labor & Employment lawyers.
Mentors and Writing Coach Program - Each summer associate is assigned a junior associate as his or her "mentor" for the summer. The associate mentors serve as all-purpose resources for the summer associates. Each summer associate is also assigned a "writing coach," drawn from the partner ranks. Designed solely to provide guidance and training to the summer associates in the critical area of legal writing, the writing coach program falls wholly outside of the formal evaluation system.

Giving Back
For more than 10 years, Crowell & Moring has offered several of our summer associates a chance to participate in our Public Interest Fellowship program. Summer associates selected as public interest fellows, or PIFs, "split" their summer between the firm and a public interest organization. Over the past several years, approximately one-third of our summer associates participated in the program, spending up to five weeks working at one of the following organizations:

Legal Counsel For The Elderly
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
National Women’s Law Center
Public Defender Service For The District Of Columbia
The American Civil Liberties Union, Washington Office
The Children’s Law Center
Washington Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights And Urban Affairs

Summer associates who are not PIFs nonetheless play an active role in the firm's pro bono practice, contributing approximately 2000 hours collectively each summer. Recent summer projects have ranged from gathering information for a prisoner's commutation petition and assessing whether another prisoner's confessions should be suppressed, to obtaining a protective order on behalf of a victim of domestic violence.

Playing
We design our summer social calendar to provide summer associates additional opportunities to get to know us, our firm's culture, and the Washington, DC area. Whether your passion is music, Shakespeare, major league baseball, bicycling around the Washington Metropolitan area, or taking a tour of the Supreme Court, we have events to suit you. Our events range from a black-tie, all-attorney "Casino Night," to the weekly "Greasy Grunt Lunch" series, which features cheap eats at local greasy spoons, led by associates armed only with antacids and appetites for culinary risk.

And you won’t want to miss our “Took’s Tour.” One of our most popular and unique events, it’s the brainchild of Eldon "Took" Crowell, our founding partner and perhaps the most popular and unique lawyer gracing our halls. Dubbed "The Heart and Soul of Crowell Tour," Took leads summer associates on a trip to those disadvantaged parts of Washington, DC that many choose to ignore. Stops on his bus tour include City Lights (a school for troubled youths), So Others Might Eat ("SOME"), and the Edward Parent-Child Development Center.