Rebecca Wertzer
Rebecca Wertzer
Law School: Harvard Law School
Qualification: J.D. expected 2009
Program attended: Summer 2008
Work undertaken as a summer associate
I chose Withers because I wanted to be sure to have a summer experience in the areas of estate planning and estate and gift taxation and the Firm did no disappoint. My work involved a lot of legal research and writing, as I was frequently asked to analyze a tax question and write a memo to the assigning partner explaining my conclusions. I also received additional writing experience when I was given the opportunity to write the initial draft of a client's trust. I have a particular interest in art law and non-profit work, so I was also given the opportunity to help draft presentations on legal issues affecting auctioneers and legal issues affecting private foundations.
The social scene
I also enjoyed participating in the official firm outings, which included everything from a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, to bowling, to dinner in New York. However, I think my favorite firm event was really a ritual that was created over the course of the summer: our weekly trivia night at a local restaurant. While trivia night was never an official firm outing, it soon became a tradition for principals, associates and summer associates to form teams every Tuesday night and face off against one another. I think the fact that we developed this kind of tradition is emblematic of how my colleagues at Withers were people that I truly wanted to spend my time with, even outside of the office.
My experience in London
I was very excited to go to London as part of the Withers summer program. I was a little worried that the work might be less substantive, as I was only going to be there for two weeks, but I found the work in London to be just as engaging as everything else I was given during the summer. Moreover, I realized that Withers is truly one united firm that just has many different offices, as the London office maintains the same culture of intellectual curiosity and collaboration that exists in New Haven.
General impressions of the program
I truly don't believe I could have had a better summer experience than the one I had with Withers and I absolutely loved coming into work every single morning. I found the program to be very well set up, and especially appreciated the summer associate training programs that were put together for us, which had topics that ranged from "creating an estate plan" to "an introduction to family offices". I also felt like Withers really wanted to make sure that received the kind of work that I was interested in. Bryan Galat, who was in charge of summer associate assignments, was always checking in with me to make sure that I was getting projects that involved art or charitable organizations.