The discussion surrounding the plight of professionals on parental leave is a tinderbox fueled by tensions ranging from pay to work-life balance. Muted from this discussion are those who take significant time off to raise their young families. Considered as having left the workforce, these men and women have been largely ignored. However, the legal department of JP Morgan Chase & Co. is moving to shake up this dynamic.
The company’s Re-Entry Programme, which expanded to the legal and investment bank divisions in 2014, offers paid ten-to-fourteen-week internships to professionals of VP rank and higher that include training sessions geared toward re-acclimating participants to the workforce and acquainting them with JPMorgan with the aim to find the “intern” a full-time position.
Chase piloted the program last fall, opening it applicants who had not practiced law for at least two years. Of a pool of 165, 4 interns were selected. One of the interns, Joanne Monteavaro, practiced complex commercial and securities litigation at Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison and at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr before leaving the profession. According to Corporate Counsel, “after completing the Legal ReEntry program, Monteavaro was named vice president and assistant general counsel in Chase’s card services department. And the pilot program was deemed a success with funding for a second year.”
The program was created as a diversity initiative by Senior VP and Associate GC Miriam Frieden who sought to champion female and minority attorneys without the resources to reignite their careers.
“It was an enormous success,” Frieden told CorpCounsel.com. “’We saw that we could match our company to a pool of very talented candidates who had a desire to come back to the workplace and start at a vice president level.’”
Partnering with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the participants received a three-day orientation to Chase and a broad overview of the company, and meeting senior legal leaders. They also received training in practical legal skills and other areas, especially on new technology, throughout the 12-week internship.
The program is raising significant interest among career services officers who hope that Chase’s initiative spurs similar programs at other companies. Marta Ricardo, head of alumni and career services at Columbia Law School, told CorpCounsel.com, “’ ‘’They get to tap into a smart group of candidates that might fall through the cracks in a traditional hiring framework… usually in law, it’s up or out. I think this is an evolution in how we think about the law professional.’”
