Our summer associate program is committed to providing first and second year law students the opportunity to know and feel what it is like to work as an attorney at Day Casebeer—to work with us and with our clients. We emphasize substantive, meaningful assignments across the breadth of our practice.

We offer intensive training programs for all our attorneys throughout the year. During the summer we organize a number of sessions that are particularly geared to developing the skills of young attorneys, including programs on brief writing, taking and defending depositions, oral advocacy and trial practice.

Our clients, our cases and our values make Day Casebeer unique. For law students considering a career in intellectual property litigation and strategic product counseling, Day Casebeer affords an invaluable opportunity to be immersed in our practice–and to have a great time too.
 

An Interview with Day Casebeer Partners Renee Dubord Brown and Will Nelson.

Q: What's special about Day Casebeer's Summer Associate Program?

A: First of all, we don't make up assignments – our summer associates are all doing real work. We give them projects they'd get as first year associates at the firm. There really is little distinction between first years and summers. We may not expect them to understand the case as well as our associates because they're only on it for a short time, but we make their experience as realistic as possible.

Q: Are there formal training sessions?

A: We run many of our major training programs during the summer specifically to benefit the Summer Associates. In past summers, we have conducted a full mock trial, and every Summer Associate did either closing or opening statements or examined witnesses. We have also held a deposition workshop, which is two full days of practicing defense and taking of depositions. At the end of the program, each of the participants received feedback from four of our partners.

We also have an ongoing program of presentations and training on a variety of areas of the law that we practice. We hold bi-weekly all-lawyer meetings on topics such as the mechanics of practice, how to serve a subpoena in a foreign country, and the complexities of anti-trust law. We recently had a presentation on the "means plus function analysis"—an approach to writing patent claims that has varied in scope over the years since the law has changed.

Q: What's the overall goal of your program?

A: We give our summers as accurate a sense as possible of what it's really like to work here. We also try very hard to make sure that part of that experience is getting lots of face time with senior people – partners in particular. We want our summers to get immediate and direct experience working with partners and immediate, direct feedback from partners on their work.

Q: How integrated with the firm do the summers actually become?

A: We make sure that everyone meets everyone else. That's really important for a firm of our size. One of the key things is making sure it's a good fit and that the summers are comfortable in this environment. They work with as many people as possible and have a good sense for who we are.

We strive to integrate the summers into the ongoing conduct of cases - so if we go off to a deposition we take them along. If we go to a hearing or trial we take them along whenever we can.

Q: What kind of work do summers do?

A: Summers obviously do substantive legal research. They also do factual research and analysis in direct contact with clients. Our summers draft motions, they do deposition prep, they draft deposition questions, they review jury instructions. We take them to "meet and confers." We make sure that summers leave here not only with high standards for legal research and writing but also real world experiences in our field of practice. We give them every opportunity to gain substantive experience and knowledge in patent law and tech litigation.

At the same time, we're pretty open about this – intellectual property litigation and strategic product counseling in technology and biotechnology is a pretty specific discipline – we don't expect that we'll be the right long-term career choice for everyone who summers with us. But, we always tell people in interviews that choosing Day Casebeer for a summer is an invaluable experience either way – you will very likely find that you like IP litigation the way it's practiced here and want to join us or, if you take a different path, you will learn skills and have experiences that will give you a head start anywhere you choose to go.

Q: OK, but what about the fun stuff?

A: Oh, we do the full panoply of fun stuff – we have a wine tasting, a luau, a trip to a concert every summer. We have organized hikes in the California mountains, we've done cooking school with a private chef, and we do frequent lunches. We have an annual sail on San Francisco Bay, and there's the annual firm-wide summer picnic and softball game. Every year it's the partners and summers vs. the associates and staff. The partners and summers win every year - either through skill or otherwise – we've got one especially athletic partner who somehow finds himself on an extremely frequent rotation in the batting order if it looks like the partners and summers might fall behind.