Professional Development

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“Our comprehensive talent strategy offers all of our attorneys and business professionals the opportunity to grow and succeed.”
-Chandra Kilgriff, Chief Talent Officer

 

At Saul Ewing, we are invested in our people. We provide firm members with sophisticated, interesting work and support their development through ongoing skill-building, feedback, mentoring, and career planning resources. Our Professional Development team is dedicated to helping our people develop the relationships and skills that provide opportunities for continual growth throughout their careers. We recognize that diversity, equity and inclusion are integral to professional development, so we build DEI into all aspects of our work.

Attorney Onboarding & Integration

We know how important it is for lawyers to get off to a strong start at a new firm and have designed early opportunities to build critical relationships and skills.

New Associate Orientation

We offer our first year associates a robust onboarding program each fall, including pairing them with associate and partner mentors; offering numerous in-person and virtual training programs designed to help them get up to speed on the firm and their legal practice; and providing meaningful opportunities for interacting with our firm leaders and each other. In our annual New Associate Challenge, first year associates compete on teams to earn points doing activities that help them meet colleagues and learn about firm resources and practice areas.

Lateral Attorney Onboarding

Our administrative teams meet with lateral attorneys regularly to check in on their onboarding and offer helpful resources and solutions. Through our Lateral Roundtables, we provide associates and counsel who have joined us over the past few months a chance to connect with other new colleagues. Our goal is to provide a warm welcome to the firm and to help our newest attorneys feel at home here as quickly as possible.

All new attorneys are also matched with an associate mentor immediately to facilitate their onboarding to the firm.

Career Planning and Feedback

We pride ourselves on the significant time and resources we devote to working collaboratively with our attorneys to establish career development goals and provide clear and meaningful feedback throughout the year. Our Associate Expectations framework lays out competencies specific to associates at every level, so they clearly understand their performance expectations. Depending on their level, associates meet with their assigned mentors to create either a Career Development Plan or a Business Development Plan each year. As part of our annual performance review process, associates receive individualized recommendations and coaching to help them continue to grow in their careers.

Mentoring & Coaching

The focus of Saul Ewing’s coaching initiative is Career Well-Being, which is led by a CliftonStrengths/ICF certified internal coach.  Career Well-Being Coaching is a talent management tool that creates a space for our people to explore how they do their best work, with the goal of designing a plan to optimize future performance and enhance well-being.  

Some areas of focus include:

  • Individual career planning and goal setting, including how the intersection of intentions, mindsets, values, strengths, behaviors/habits, and choices impact setting and achieving goals
  • Optimizing inclusive leadership, communication, collaboration, relationship-building, and time-management
  • Work/life integration 
  • Stress management
  • Uncovering blind spots and moving past obstacles that have impacted progress
  • Coaching as a management/leadership skill
  • Group coaching around a shared topic
  • Team coaching to enhance collaboration 

Learning and Development

The Professional Development team offers a variety of trainings, seminars, and on-demand resources. We collaborate with Practice Groups and Departments on substantive legal trainings and with our Marketing, DEI, Coaching, and Well-Being professionals to provide professional skills courses. We also design meaningful learning opportunities for in-person attorney retreats.

Skill-Building Curriculum

Our Litigation and Transactional Departments offer a variety of legal training opportunities to grow and develop our associates across our 18 offices. For example, the Litigation Department periodically offers comprehensive skill-building opportunities, such as a writing program and deposition and trial training. The Associate Trial Training Program offers our litigators at all associate levels mentoring from our top trial litigators and the opportunity for on-their-feet trial experience in a mock trial. Our Litigation 101 chat series focuses on the lifecycle of a typical litigation matter and offers our junior associates an opportunity to hear practical tips, best practices, and lessons learned from our experienced partners. Our Litigation Support Team educates attorneys at all levels through the firm's eDiscovery Training Series. Our Transactional practices offer practice-specific trainings and workshops, including a Corporate Foundations series and a quarterly Real Estate webinar series.  

In addition to our in-house training, we support substantive education for our attorneys through our privileged membership with the Practicing Law Institute (PLI). Through partnerships with digital learning platforms such as Praktio and Hotshot Legal, we offer on-demand training to help our attorneys advance their skills.

Well-Being

At Saul Ewing, we believe that a culture that includes a focus on well-being is necessary for us to deliver high energy, innovation, and agility to meet our clients’ needs.  We also understand that work and life influence each other. So, our holistic well-being framework, Thrive@Saul, is focused on helping our people bring their best selves to work. The foundation of this framework supports the idea that well-being is not one-size-fits-all.  A balanced life, or what people view as thriving in any particular area of their life, will look different for each person.  We embed well-being concepts into our policies, practices, procedures and programs, and offer a variety of well-being focused programs that meet the diverse needs and interests of our people. We support a culture where everyone thrives by focusing on the day-to-day experience of our people to ensure that inclusivity and belonging are built into the fabric of the firm and levels of engagement are high.  As a signatory firm to the ABA Well-Being Pledge since 2019, the firm continues to work to reduce the stigma and address the impact associated with mental health and alcohol/drug issues in the legal profession.  

Flexibility

The firm’s innovative 4+4 Hybrid Plan creates flexibility and predictability for our firm members in order to combine the benefits of both in-person and remote work. We ask everyone to be in the office on Wednesdays, and designate those days as “Zoom-free” to give us all a much-needed break from our screens and help ensure everyone can leverage those days for in-person collaboration and connection. In addition to Wednesdays, we encourage everyone to be with their clients or colleagues in-person at least four additional days per month. The firm has additional options for flexible work arrangements (reduced hours expectations, schedule flexibility, etc.) upon request. We are dedicated to working closely with each firm member to identify an arrangement that meets their individual needs.

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