Welcome back to my summer blog! Somehow, two weeks have passed since I last checked in to update my loyal fans on how my summer at WilmerHale is progressing. In that time, I have picked up some fascinating assignments and jammed exactly one printer. I have also met a wonderful assortment of attorneys over breakfast, lunch, coffee, and—only in 2019—corn-flavored ice cream. It did not taste like corn, and that was okay!
First, let’s talk about the work. My fellow summer associates and I have had the chance to dive right in to some of the firm’s most interesting and important matters. The attorneys here at WilmerHale DC have asked us to draft sections of appellate briefs, assist with high-stakes investigations and Congressional hearing preparations, sit in on witness interviews, and generally engage with legal issues that we are likely confronting for the first time. I, for one, am looking forward to untangling the intricate administrative process surrounding Social Security claims and teaching myself about the legal boundaries of corporate competition over data hosted on the internet.
Beyond our actual assignments, WilmerHale has done an incredible job introducing us to practice areas that may not have been on our radar when we started at the firm a few weeks ago. Here in DC, we have had the chance to hear from partners defending Native American tribal sovereignty, conducting sensitive investigations on behalf of corporations and educational institutions, and counseling innovative startups, as well as major tech companies, on data security and privacy. The Regulatory and Government Affairs group made particularly quick work of this, hosting the summer associates for a series of speed roundtables where attorneys gave us their best pitches for joining their specific practice areas.
Most importantly, the past few weeks have given the summer associates some great opportunities to bond. On a recent Friday morning, we volunteered together at the farmer’s market run by Bread for the City, a nonprofit that provides food, clothing, and legal services to DC residents with low incomes. Having the chance to meet and serve so many members of the community was an amazing experience. The volunteer event also required us to figure out how to work together on the fly, whether by forming an assembly line to sort, bag, and distribute the most high-quality produce or by jumping into dumpsters to break down and separate recyclable waste. We were warned to ditch the business casual.