Goodwin First-Year Lawyers Embed With Clients in Unique Program

Some new Goodwin associates are getting their first on-the-job legal training outside of the firm.

A total of 32 Goodwin associates are working directly in legal departments at New Balance, Hubspot, and Samsara, among other clients. They’re part of the firm’s nine-month “client immersion program,” which first launched in January 2024.

“Secondments” have long been common at large law firms, but participants typically have several years of experience by the time they ship out for temporary rotations with clients. Goodwin’s program targets the firm’s most junior lawyers, months after they finish law school and begin their careers.

The firm rolled out the program after a slowdown in corporate work that prompted Goodwin and some of its closest rivals to lay off associates in early 2023. It is designed to give junior lawyers substantive training and solidify the firm’s connections with some of its top clients.

“Most lawyers gain this perspective much later in their careers, if they ever do, frankly,” Anthony McCusker, Goodwin’s chair, said in an interview. The program is an “opportunity to use such close client relationships that we have to prepare our first-year attorneys with experience that they would not receive anywhere else at this stage in their careers,” he said.

Goodwin pays associates their full salaries during the rotations and makes them eligible for bonuses, according to the firm. The program, which the firm said is voluntary, was expanded this year to include litigation associates after starting with a group of 24 corporate lawyers.

Associates who get early experience working directly with clients can build their skillsets, said Summer Eberhard, a legal recruiter with Lateral Link. But they also risk losing out on several months of law firm training and key face time with partners.

“The work you do in a law firm does differ from what you do in-house,” she said. The volume and diversity of work is typically greater at firms because associates work with different clients, Eberhard said. “Law firms are really motivated to train really great lawyers, whereas a company is focused on doing whatever it is the company does.”

Rethinking Training

Danny Doherty wasn’t interested in the program when he joined Goodwin as a first-year associate last year. He wanted to jump back in after working as a summer associate at the firm.

“I loved the partners I worked with and I wanted to get in the weeds,” said Doherty, a Boston-based associate who is now two months into a stint at TA Associates, one of the firm’s private equity clients.

He changed his mind after a conversation with Michael Kendall, Goodwin’s M&A co-chair, about the opportunity to work directly with an important client, Doherty said. He’s getting valuable experience working alongside the company’s general counsel.

“I’m working one-on-one with him through a ton of different stuff, mostly legal work, but stuff that I wouldn’t be probably doing ‘til fourth or fifth year,” Doherty said.

Law firms that laid off associates during the recent slowdown may have gaps in their associate ranks, Eberhard said.

“This is a really creative way of trying to kind of preserve that first-year class that is going to be very important three, four, or five years down the road,” she said of Goodwin’s program.

Goodwin created the client immersion program as it also overhauled the firm’s first-year training plan. Associates spend the first nine weeks on the job in business training, said Josh Klazkin, a private equity partner who sits on the firm’s management and executive committees.

“Instead of kind of doing the odds and ends, we’re going to try and really give them Goodwin 101—to make them optimally effective when they hit the ground running in January,” he said.

Kate Minorini, a second-year associate in Goodwin’s Boston office, took a secondment with a real estate investment firm after that initial training period.

“I was a little nervous about it just because it was different than the plan I had coming in, but I wanted to do the program because I thought it was a good way to differentiate myself,” Minorini said. She worked on private fund, joint venture, and real estate asset acquisition and disposition matters.

“The opportunity to learn in a really genuine way, but at a pace that isn’t billed out hourly or every six minutes to our clients, was really valuable,” she said. “It enabled me to get hands-on experience at a pace that allowed me to process it.”