Professional Development
Grow and enhance your skills here. Akin provides continuing training and development opportunities to help you explore your individual potential and reach your professional goals.
Akin Advantage
Akin fosters a culture of talent development, diversity, inclusion, engagement and opportunity. Here all lawyers can learn, advance and thrive while delivering exceptional client service.
Learn
Akin Elevate
ACE Framework and Skills Training
Counsel Academy
Mid-Level Associate Academy
Practice Group Benchmarks
Practice Group Training Curricula
Risk Management and Ethics
Advance
Akin Advisor
Akin Staffing Hub
Alumni and Client Relations
Business and Client Development
Career Counseling and Planning
Real-Time Feedback
Thrive
Akin JUMP
Firm Citizenship and Inclusion
Global Citizenship and Pro Bono
Innovation and Agility
Recognition
Wellness
Firm Core Competencies
Prioritizing Relationships
- Embracing a Growth Mindset
- Leading & Influencing Others
- Being a Firm Citizen & Serving Our Communities
Delivering Excellence
- Establishing Practice Area Mastery
- Communicating With Impact
- Developing Innovative Solutions
- uilding & Maintaining Your Personal Brand
Taking Ownership
- Understanding Client Interests & Proactively Addressing Client Needs
- Managing Projects
- Showing Judgment & Being Decisive
- Expanding Business Relationships
Academies
Core Competencies | Advancement | Leadership
Fall Academy
- 1st year associates
- Foundational skills to hit the ground running
Mid-Level Academy
- 4th year associates
Mid-Level Academy
- 4th year associates
- Effective leadership and management skills
Counsel Academy
- 6th year counsel
- Deepen leadership and management skills
Practice Group Training Curricula
Achieve the competencies required to take your particular practice forward and upward. Akin provides the courses and hands-on guidance you need to master the fundamentals and pursue greater challenges.
Skill Development & Coaching Opportunities
- Accounting for Lawyers
- Legal Writing Workshops and Coaching
- Management and Leadership Skills
- Negotiations Skills
- NITA Advocacy Programs
- Presentation and Communication Skills
- In-House CLE Programming
- Access to external resources including Practicing Law Institute (PLI) and HotShot
The Associates Committee and Academies offer hackathons and brainstorming sessions where associates and counsel can propose new and innovative ideas to firm leadership. Our Akin JUMP! program was actually born from these sessions.
Career Counseling
Akin is proud to include career counseling as part of our attorney development programming. Career counseling provides confidential and individually customized counseling and coaching to help our lawyers thrive during every career phase. Lawyers can brainstorm management topics during micro-coaching sessions, or work on long-term career planning or skill development. With a social work degree, decades in attorney development and extensive coaching training, our Director of Career Counseling can handle it all.
Evaluations and Performance Feedback
Lawyers at Akin participate in candid and ongoing conversations about their career paths and receive meaningful feedback on career progress. In just a few clicks, you can assign evaluators and begin a self-evaluation form for easy and efficient communications.
- Review clear performance expectations for associates and counsel based on our core competencies.
- Understand where you need continued skill development and receive the support to achieve it.
- Create associate and counsel self-evaluations for review to help you meet your specific goals.
- Benefit from performance management guidance when you need help progressing.
Akin Advisor
Each associate, counsel and advisor is paired with an Akin Advisor positioned to support their development in a variety of ways—progressing along with the firm’s ACE framework, embodying the firm’s values, identifying and working on next-level skills and even networking within the firm.
Akin Thrive
Akin Thrive is the firm’s real-time feedback system that allows lawyers and advisors to provide or request feedback at any time. Frequent guidance promotes engagement and productivity, fosters collaboration and supports inclusiveness. Akin Thrive is a quick and easy way to keep the lines of communication open in an agile work environment.
- Provide narrative feedback or send and receive a “high-five” from a phone, tablet or laptop.
- Feedback is automatically sent after responding to two quick questions.
- Lawyers/advisors can also request feedback with a short request form.
Akin JUMP!
Akin JUMP! enables associates and counsel to grow their practice through a short stay in another office. Participating in an Akin JUMP! helps associates and counsel build contacts and network with colleagues and clients while growing their knowledge base. For example:
- An associate from corporate in Washington, D.C. jumps to LA for two weeks to work more closely to get a better understanding of the needs of LA clients.
- A counsel from litigation in New York jumps to London for two weeks to study the international arbitration practice.
- An associate from funds in London jumps to New York for two weeks to work with a partner who specializes in a particular type of funds transaction and to meet clients in person.
- A trade associate from Washington, D.C. jumps to London to learn more about the sanctions practice.
Summer Associate Program
Summer associates participate in both practice-specific courses and general sessions on career growth, networking, and legal skills. The summer program offers a balance of firmwide training and local training to give our summer associates a true sense of working in a collaborative and multidimensional law firm.