🎙Episode #021: Panel Opinion - How to Succeed as a Legal Intern or Summer Associate

👋🏻 Greetings from Washington, D.C. to all 408 of you on the podcast e-mail list!

I am excited to announce the first in a special series of one-off episodes I am calling “Panel Opinion.” These episodes focus on providing tips and techniques from a panel of experienced practitioners on a single topic as opposed to telling the story of a single lawyer.

This episode’s topic is how to succeed as a legal intern or summer associate (especially in a hybrid or remote-first world). This episode will be particularly valuable for the law student audience but will also be valuable for any current lawyers who plan to work with students this summer.

The panelists for this episode of Panel Opinion include: 

Natasha Zech who is the Director of Attorney Recruiting, Diversity, and Development at my old law firm, Williams & Connolly LLP here in Washington, D.C. In that role, Natasha wears a number of hats, but most important for today’s episode she is the coordinator of hiring and the summer associate program--which as I can attest as both a former summer associate and firm lawyer are absolutely stellar. Natasha has been at Williams & Connolly for the past eleven years and before that was a litigator at several firms in the D.C. area and was a law clerk on the D.C. Superior Court. She is a graduate of UVA (Go Cavaliers) and the Georgetown University Law Center (Go Hoyas). 

Professor Rachel Gurvich who is a clinical associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Professor Gurvich teaches legal research and writing and has also served as the co-chair of the Clerkship Committee. She is well known on social media for her work supporting law students not just at UNC but across the country, often under the Twitter hashtag #PracticeTuesday. Before UNC, she clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced for seven years at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Boston, where she specialized in patent and appellate litigation and helped coordinate that office’s summer associate program. She is a graduate of UNC (Go Heels) and Harvard Law (Go Crimson). 

Jean Yin Crews who is a counsel at Venable LLP in Washington, D.C. where she practices real estate law. Jean started at Venable as a summer associate a decade ago and has been practicing there since graduation! Jean also spent two years co-running the office’s summer program and has served on the firm’s hiring committee. She is a graduate of Princeton (Go Tigers) and Penn Law (Go Quakers).

One final programming note: traditional interviews will return on Thursday and will remain the vast majority of what the podcast does. In the meantime, if you have any feedback or suggestions for this new occasional episode format or ideas for Panel Opinion episodes please let me know at howilawyer@gmail.com or @JonahPerlin on Twitter (or just respond to this e-mail).

See you Thursday,

Jonah