The 411

Social Activities

During the summer, we host a variety of social activities in order to provide our summer associates an opportunity to become acquainted with each other and with our firm's lawyers, their families and friends. Planned activities during the summers typically include a Welcome Reception, an outdoor Crab Feast, Orioles games, a tour of Camden Yards, a wine tasting reception, a golf outing, barbecues and other informal gatherings at the homes of our lawyers, and an end of summer party.  Miles & Stockbridge participates in a coed softball league that provides another means to connect with our colleagues in a relaxed, informal, and fun setting.

Mentoring

We seek to strike the right balance not only between work and play, but also between providing you adequate safety nets and helping you work independently.  Our firm realizes that to improve your legal acumen it is important that you are afforded an opportunity to discuss legal issues and to seek guidance from more experienced lawyers. Each summer associate is assigned two lawyer mentors to provide needed guidance: one in the Business Department and one in the Litigation Department. Our mentors meet with summer associates regularly throughout the summer to provide support and to help each student become part of our firm. Members of the recruitment committee and our lawyers who assign projects are available to discuss your career goals and to help familiarize you with our firm's practice groups. We view these opportunities as mechanisms for you to get to know us, what we value, and how we serve our clients.  In addition, our Recruitment Team, staffed with former lawyers, provide additional mentoring.

Feedback

The lawyers of Miles & Stockbridge recognize the importance of providing timely and constructive feedback to our summer associates. In furtherance of that goal, we ask each lawyer who assigns work to a summer associate work to give project-by-project feedback on research, analysis and writing. This informal feedback provides our summer associates with the necessary tools to hone their legal skills.

In addition to the informal feedback from those lawyers for whom the summer associates work, the Recruitment Committee provides an extensive mid-summer evaluation, which identifies strengths and weaknesses, and provides each summer associate an opportunity to work on areas where improvement may be necessary. We typically notice significant improvement in the second half of the summer. We also hold formal end of the summer reviews, which are intended to provide overall analysis and constructive criticism of each summer associate's work throughout the summer.

Miles & Stockbridge also values feedback from our summer associates.  Throughout each summer, our Recruitment Team solicits feedback directly from our summer associates regarding “just about everything.”  Examples include asking for constructive criticism about the content and length of our educational offerings, lawyer feedback, mentoring, work quality and work allocation.  We also ask for formal feedback during the middle and end of summer the summer program.  Where possible, we augment or adjust our program to address mid-summer feedback.