The framework of our professional development program is the Career Advancement Program (CAP). CAP offers a flexible career path structure, a robust mentoring program, supportive training, and a competency-based approach to evaluation, promotion, compensation and overall professional development.

We recognize that mentors play an important role in a lawyer's professional development and career success. Through CAP, the firm provides associates and counsel with formal mentors responsible for guiding and supporting their careers. The Diversity Committee works with firm leadership to ensure that our mentoring program supports our efforts to develop, retain and advance a diverse group of lawyers. The committee also provides opportunities for informal mentoring and networking through affinity group activities, and by sponsoring and paying for lawyers to attend diversity-related conferences and other professional development programs.

WilmerHale has a long history of community service and philanthropy, based on the strong principles John H. Pickering held in founding the firm. Today the firm pays tribute to his legacy and strengthens its commitment to the community through the annual presentation of the Pickering Fellowships.

Also, in a program with the Middlesex District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, WilmerHale sends litigation associates and counsel to the Somerville and Malden District Courts for six-month rotations as Special Assistant District Attorneys. We have participated in the program in Somerville since 1993 and in Malden since 1996.

We believe that a foundation of our success as a firm is our commitment to the training and development of our lawyers, which prepares them for wherever their paths in life may take them. For this reason, we are particularly proud of our many distinguished alumni. Our expansive alumni network includes many former WilmerHale attorneys who have moved on to highly-respectable positions after leaving the firm—for example, Chief of Staff for the Deputy Attorney General, in-house counsel for National Football League teams, an Assistant Solicitor General, an Assistant White House Counsel, the director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the US Attorney for Washington DC.