Summer Associate Program

The summer associate program is one of the most important elements of the firm's recruitment effort.  If you receive an offer to join us as a summer associate, we have made an initial judgment that you can make a valuable contribution to the firm's practice.  A significant portion of our associate hiring each year comes from the summer associate group of previous years, and a very high percentage of our former summer associates who enter private practice return to the firm.

Washington

Work Assignments
We make every effort to give our summer associates a rounded view of Washington law practice.  Summer associate assignments are designed to provide a variety of substantive work and the broadest possible exposure to our lawyers.  In order to help ensure that these assignments match the work preferences of our summer associates, they select the majority of their projects from an on-line database that contains a variety of assignments from all areas of the practice. The remaining projects are assigned with the goal of exposing our summer associates to the diversity of our practice and meeting the firm's needs.

Professional Training and Evaluation
Over the summer, we keep a special on-line database of trials, arguments, depositions, negotiations, and other legal activities in which the firm is involved, and we encourage summer associates to attend as many of these events as possible.  We host weekly seminars that cover the firm's organization, its practice, and other matters of topical interest, with presentations by speakers both inside and outside of the firm.  We also try to give our summer associates direct exposure to those institutions that make Washington unique: the Supreme Court, Congress, and the executive agencies.

It is our intention that each summer associate will be a better lawyer after spending a summer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP.  To this end, we pay careful attention to the evaluation process.  The summer associate's advisor provides a comprehensive review of the SA's first project before the work product is submitted.  The first and all subsequent assignments will be discussed with the summer associate by at least one of the attorneys who supervised the project.  In addition to this ongoing feedback, the Chair of the Summer Program Committee conducts a mid-term and exit review with each summer associate.  Professional training is a year-round process at Steptoe & Johnson LLP.  Summer associates are invited to all professional training programs offered during the summer, but some programs, such as practical tips from associates are planned exclusively for the benefit of summer associates.

Social Events
It is important to us that we get to know our summer associates not just within the office environment, but also in more informal settings.  To that end, we sponsor a varied program of events, ranging from sailing to theater parties, at which summer associates have the chance to get acquainted with firm attorneys as well as with one another.  Our most popular events include a day of sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, bicycle tours of Washington, events at the firm's suite at the Verizon Center, the annual Shakespeare in the Park picnic and performance, and a night of baseball to see a Nationals game.

DC Summer Associate Public Service Program
The firm offers a program that affords a number of our summer associates the opportunity to spend three to four weeks of their summer working for a public interest organization in Washington during the latter part of the summer.  The Steptoe Summer Public Service Program was established in 1991.

Split Summer Policy
We extend offers for the entire summer and strongly discourage split summers.  Requests by second-year associates to split the summer are reviewed by the chair of the Hiring Committee on a case-by-case basis.  Requests may be granted, but only for those who can spend a minimum of seven weeks at the beginning of the summer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP. We do not permit split summers for first-year summer associates.

Phoenix

Since opening in 1987, the Phoenix office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP has expanded its practice significantly and currently has approximately 60 attorneys.  The Phoenix office has a broad-based practice, including business transactions, commercial litigation, labor and employment, insurance coverage and bad faith, state and local taxation, media and communications law, water rights and environmental law, and real estate development and finance.  In addition to Arizona matters, Phoenix office attorneys are involved in regional and national cases, frequently working closely with other offices.

Steptoe in Phoenix is neither a free-standing branch operation nor merely an extension of the firm's original Washington base.  The office manages its own representations and staffing requirements but also is closely involved in the work of the firm as a whole, and each of the firm’s practice groups transcends individual offices.  Phoenix partners serve on the firm's Executive Committee and on the committee that recommends the election of new partners and of counsel.

Associates joining the firm in Phoenix can expect to deal with a variety of matters and work in more than one practice group.  Given the office's size, associates have the opportunity to rapidly assume substantial responsibilities.  Phoenix associates have access to the firm's extensive research and in-house training resources, and receive detailed annual evaluations to assist them in understanding their strengths as well as areas that require additional attention.

Summer Associate Program
The Phoenix office operates its own summer program for law students interested in practicing on a national level while living in the Southwest.  The summer program is designed to allow our lawyers and staff and the summer associates to know each other as people, to permit us to assess how the student would fit into our practice, and to give the student an accurate sense of what it is like to be a lawyer in our office.  We offer summer associate positions only to the number of students that we intend to hire as associates the following year; as a result, we are able to evaluate summer associates on their individual merits, rather than as competitors for a limited number of spots. 

How You’ll Get Here
Members of the Phoenix Recruiting Committee interview at numerous law schools across the country, and conduct videoconference interviews at a limited number of other schools.  Those schools and our visiting dates are listed in this website under On-Campus Interviews.  Our Washington colleagues ably interview for us at additional schools, and we encourage those interested in the Phoenix office to sign up for interviews and indicate their interest in the Grand Canyon State (the D.C. lawyers will be understanding, albeit jealous).  Please bring a transcript and writing sample to your interview. If you are attending a school at which Steptoe does not interview, you may send us a resume, transcript, and writing sample directly.

We bring back a select group of students for in-office interviews.  We don’t want you to be surprised: there will be four half-hour, two-attorney interview sessions, one of which will focus on the subject matter of your writing sample.

How Long You’ll Stay
As a closely-knit office, we believe that it is very important for us to know our summer associates extremely well before making offers of associate positions.  We therefore extend offers for the entire summer, which usually means a minimum of twelve weeks. While we strongly discourage split summers, we understand that some of our second-year clerks may be obligated to spend part of their summer at the firm they clerked for the year before in order to maintain their eligibility for an offer of an associate position.  We try to accommodate those concerns, but we require that such summer associates spend the first eight weeks of the summer with us. 

The Work You’ll Do
We try to give summer associates a true sense of what it is like to be an associate by giving them real assignments that associates would otherwise do.  Attorneys submit requests for assistance to our Summer Associate Committee. Two members of that committee act as gatekeepers in distributing the assignments, thereby ensuring that the assignments are appropriate and that summer associates work with several attorneys on a variety of projects in a range of practice areas. If summer associates have specific interests that we can accommodate, we try to do so in a manner consistent with these goals.  In the end, that is in both the summer associates’ and the firm’s best interests.

We encourage (and even strong-arm) attorneys into giving summer associates constructive feedback on their work.  The Summer Associate Committee also appoints for each summer associate a specific attorney who will review all of that summer associate’s work and provide additional feedback. The Chair of the Recruiting Committee conducts a mid-summer review and final review for each summer associate.

The Things You’ll Learn
In addition to formal assignments, we make special efforts to ensure that summer associates learn the way lawyers learn: by seeing lawyers in action.  We encourage our attorneys to bring summer associates with them to trials, hearings, arguments, depositions, and other proceedings. We also include summer associates in our in-house training programs and conduct special programs for the summer associates.  In addition, each of the Phoenix summer associates spends a week working in our Washington office and meeting our East Coast colleagues.

The Fun You’ll Have
People don’t come to Arizona just to sit in an office.  We plan a variety of formal and informal social events for summer associates, from trips en masse to low-key, small dinners at someone’s abode.  In the past, entertainment has included Diamondback games at  air-conditioned Chase Field (which is across the street from our offices); a trip to the Phoenix Art Museum; cooking classes; movie night at the home theater of one of our partners; and a retreat up north to the Red Rocks of Sedona (in Phoenix, though dry, it’s still heat).  This past summer we instead retreated to Tucson at the Star Pass Resort and included a relaxing tour of Southern Arizona Wine Country. Then, of course, there are the weekly attorney lunches and the monthly all-Phoenix (lawyers and staff) birthday/anniversary lunches and random celebrations.  To keep everyone awake between the fun times, we offer the first Starbucks coffee machines in Arizona that grind and brew for your cup (no kidding).

Commitment to Equal Opportunity
Steptoe strives to make a reality of its strong philosophical commitment to equal opportunity.  The firm is a charter signatory to the Policy Statement Regarding Minority Hiring and Retention of the District of Columbia Conference on Opportunities for Minorities in the Legal Profession.  The firm has a Diversity Committee and engages in a variety of outreach programs in an effort to attract minority candidates.  The firm also has a high percentage of women attorneys.

Pro Bono and Community Activities
Steptoe has a strong tradition of pro bono representation and takes seriously the obligation set forth in the Code of Professional Responsibility to provide free legal services to those in need.