Arnold & Porter’s Executive Leadership Academy Program Featured in The National Law Journal

Arnold & Porter’s Executive Leadership Academy (APEX) program recently was featured in The National Law Journal’s article, “Beltway Firms Champion Associate and New Partner Training.” The article discusses the ways law firms are working to attract and retain talent, including the firm’s program.

The APEX program was created to invest in the long-term success of recently promoted partners and counsel and is designed to provide training, coaching, mentoring, and networking opportunities that will support and advance professional and business development efforts.

“When we are promoting people into our counsel and partnership ranks, we are promoting them for long-term success. But it’s a big change from being an associate to moving into these new responsibilities,” Arnold & Porter chair Richard M. Alexander told The National Law Journal. “We view this program as something that will help them build on that success. They’re making an investment in us, and we’re making an investment in them.”

Andy Colón, Arnold & Porter’s chief legal talent officer, told The National Law Journal, “What I often hear at industry conferences and roundtables is firms either ignore the training and development of their junior partnership and counsels, or their training is just a series of presentations on an ad hoc basis—and not good.”

“Ours is a training curriculum we built that highlights best practices on critical areas for success,” Colón said.

Inaugural participants in the APEX program are attorneys who were elevated to partner or counsel from 2019-2022, including lateral partners and counsel who mainly joined from government or in-house roles. Going forward, a new cohort will be added to APEX yearly and consist of attorneys who the firm elevated to partner or counsel or joined the firm as partner or counsel in the past year.

The design of the APEX program is “genius,” because it strengthens “parallel priorities of executive, professional development, and skill-building with the purposeful intention to cultivate a high-quality sense of authentic relationship building, community, connection and belonging among participants,” Deborah Knupp, managing director of GrowthPlay, said in the article.

David H. Freeman, CEO David Freeman Consulting Group, also lauded the program, telling The National Law Journal that the firm was “prescient” for developing APEX because the “counsel and new partner phase are critical transition periods.”

Read the full article here.