Fenwick & West seeks law students with excellent academic credentials who will thrive in an entrepreneurial, full-service Silicon Valley law firm serving a high quality, high technology and life sciences client base.

In the late summer and fall, Fenwick & West will participate in a variety of law student recruiting efforts, including traditional on-campus interviewing, interviewing at consortia and conferences and considering resumes sent directly to us. To learn when and where you can find us when we're visiting your campus, please click here.

As a Summer Associate, you may actively seek out and sample work that interests you from a variety of practice groups, including Corporate, Litigation, Intellectual Property and Tax. We have a flexible approach toward working across practice groups. Whatever your preference, our goals are to contribute to your professional growth and provide you with a solid understanding of the firm's operations. At the end of the summer we ask students to advise us of their practice group preferences.

We believe the "free market" system provides you not only with structure and support, but with a more professionally stimulating and realistic work environment. The "free market" system provides you with the tools you need to navigate successfully through the Summer Associate program and beyond as a full-time associate. Each Summer Associate is assigned an "associate buddy" to help them navigate and understand the free market system. Each practice group has a Summer Associate workflow coordinator who assists Summer Associates in finding interesting work assignments. The hiring partners and recruiting staff collect feedback on the Summer Associates' assigned work and conduct both mid-summer and final reviews with each Summer Associate to help keep them focused on their career development. With all of these tools at your disposal, we believe that you can craft the summer program that suits you best.

Because Fenwick & West is a full-service law firm, we devote considerable efforts to in-house education and training. Summer Associates are encouraged to attend any and all of our in-house training programs.

Each assignment is logged on the Summer Associate Intranet workflow system. For each project, the recruiting staff obtains evaluations and feedback which are used to provide each Summer Associate with a mid-summer review. We consider these reviews an important tool for ensuring that each Summer Associate is obtaining the right kind of work and receiving the type of constructive feedback he or she needs. Summer Associates also receive a review at the end of their summer. Finally, after all Summer Associates have completed their stay here at Fenwick, the Hiring Committee works promptly to make decisions about offers for full-time employment while the experience of the summer is still fresh in everyone's minds.

Fenwick & West has committed itself to maintaining "first tier" compensation for both Summer and full-time associates. At the same time, unlike most of our competitors, we have created an option for those attorneys who wish to bill at a less strenuous 1,800–hour level. For these attorneys, we have a slightly reduced compensation plan. If, however, an attorney bills in excess of 1,800 hours, compensation increases on a sliding scale to reflect actual hours worked. No advance notice is required: attorneys who planned to bill on the 1,800 schedule but who actually bill 1,950 hours or more will receive the same compensation as the attorneys on the 1,950–hour level.

Maybe. We want our prospective attorneys to take advantage of every opportunity to explore their career alternatives. However, we require Summer Associates to spend their first eight weeks with us. Past experience indicates that this time is necessary to take best advantage of our program, become integrated with other summer associates and attorneys, obtain challenging work assignments and participate fully in the firm activities. However, if your summer schedule permits and another prospective employer allows you to do so, we are willing to discuss the possibility of allowing you to work part of the summer with Fenwick and part with another firm.

Hawaii condos? That's right; Fenwick & West maintains condos in Maui and Kauai for associates' use. Hawaii condos are available to our associates free of charge—including airfare for two—on a rotating basis. The average time between visits is 18 months.

The photo to the right is from the Maui condo and was taken by an associate who has since become a partner.

Absolutely not. Most attorneys at Fenwick & West – some 80% – do not have technical degrees, and many Fenwick & West attorneys with technical degrees do not practice in areas that require a significant technical proficiency. At the same time, of course, Fenwick & West's position as a leading IP firm means that law students who wish to make daily use of their technical degrees will find many areas within the firm suitable for them, including intellectual property counseling, patent prosecution, licensing and litigation. And for those who wish to become more tech-savvy or simply better understand the business of our clients, we have extensive in-house training. We have also supported attorneys who wish to take the technical training necessary to become members of the patent bar or more technically proficient.

No. We have made many Summer Associate and permanent offers to individuals with no significant West Coast ties. After all, our founders did come from New York.

Silicon Valley is to the high technology industry what Wall Street traditionally has been to the world of finance. Nowhere else in the country will you see the mix of cutting-edge legal issues or the speed of legal evolution that you will see in a Silicon Valley practice. Countless regions throughout the country claim to be the "next Silicon Valley," but no other region has maintained the sustained growth found in the "real" Silicon Valley. We believe deeply in technology – and we believe deeply that Silicon Valley will continue to be the center of technology evolution and revolution.

Most of the time, the answer is no. We maintain a five-days-a-week business casual dress policy. However, we expect our attorneys to wear suits for court appearances, as well as meetings where our clients dress in more formal attire.