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New and experienced lawyers require strong professional development support if they want to keep up in the rapidly changing legal profession.Our professional development staff provides training, orientation and mentoring initiatives to help you navigate successfully. It’s easy when you hire the best legal talent in the country, but our staff is committed to refreshing programs and services that ensure we retain the best, too. Our professional development approach provides you with an educational toolbox to help you succeed in your legal career.


Training Programs
These programs provide our lawyers a variety of professional development tools:

  • First-Year Boot Camp
    All first-year associates participate in our annual four-day Boot Camp. This off-site program features substantive training conducted by nationally recognized presenters on legal writing, finance and accounting for lawyers, and client service. This program includes plenty of social events with invited Stoel Rives associates and partners, so it’s also a great opportunity to start building relationships with your entry class and others in the firm.
  • Universal Curriculum
    Our 17-session program, specifically designed for first-year associates, offers what you need to know to be a successful Stoel Rives attorney. This program also provides exposure to the wide-ranging resources and expertise available within Stoel Rives. The Universal Curriculum courses and experiences help establish a foundation of legal skills that our lawyers can develop and maintain throughout their careers.
  • Mission Critical Core Competencies
    Do you want to know where your training should be focused? Our associates do and we responded to this request by developing a Mission Critical Checklist. This tool is intended to be a general guideline for the professional development and progression of a “typical” associate at Stoel Rives. However, no individual attorney is typical, and variations from this checklist are expected. This checklist serves as a great tool to enhance communication between associates and their supervisors. Associates are encouraged to solicit performance feedback on the work products identified on the list. Your assigned coaches can help by identifying opportunities for you to obtain the appropriate skills and experiences you need to be successful at the firm.
  • Preparing for Partnership
    Our annual program for fifth-year associates is designed to help your transition from junior to senior associate. This one-and-a-half day, off-site program walks you through the process for becoming an income partner through an informative and interactive workshop. We also know that you’ll need new skills to progress toward partnership, and we offer a half-day of business development training to get you started.
  • Advanced Training
    We provide advanced training for senior associates that can include topics such as advanced legal writing, presentation and negotiation. In addition, our various practice groups offer a variety of in-house training opportunities. Finally, our lawyers also have the opportunity to attend a wide variety of in-house CLEs that provide training on specific issues relating to their practice areas.

Mentoring and Coaching
We strive for a workplace where each lawyer is highly skilled, motivated, productive and satisfied with his or her career. Our policy of strong coaching and mentoring is a cornerstone of such a workplace environment.

Following their official hire date, our new associates are assigned both a partner coach and an associate mentor, generally from the associate’s practice group. Partner coaches help with long-range career planning, skill development, managing workflow and general advice on fostering good working relationships with peers and supervisors. Coaches also assist in preparing an annual plan for purposes of establishing a coaching framework. Associate mentors, meanwhile, are usually mid- to senior-level associates who can help provide moral and technical support.

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