Wish you had gone to Harvard Law School instead of NYU?  Yeah, I know the feeling. Though I was a happy camper at NYU School of Law (please don't confuse it with New York Law School), who ever recovers from being dinged by Harvard?

Now, some of you will have a second chance. If you land an associate position at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, you can put Harvard Law on your resume.  The Wall Street Law Blog reports that Milbank just set up a bespoke five-year training program at Harvard Law School for its midlevel associates.

The program, called [email protected], will be taught by Harvard's law and business school faculty, and covers legal subjects, plus "accounting, economics, finance, and negotiation--areas clients themselves tend to care deeply about," reports the WSJ. Similar to an executive MBA program, the Milbank training is open to all associates (including those in foreign offices) and runs from the end of their third year through the seventh.

Imagine hanging out in Cambridge for eight days each year--and having Milbank pick up the tab! It's like having your parents pay for tennis camp in the Berkshires during the long, hot summer.

But what I'm curious about is this: How much will this associate camp cost? I've asked Milbank, but have not heard back. Let's see now: There's the Harvard tuition, room and board, transportation--not to mention all those lost billables. The billables were "a significant consideration for Milbank," Scott Edelman (left), Milbank's vice chairman and HLS alum, told The National Law Journal. But he also noted that "the firm already holds four five-day conferences for associates during their first seven years with the firm."

Still, Milbank's program is unique. Altman Weil consultant Eric Seeger told the NLJ that "firms have been moving away from affiliations with prestigious academic institutions," and usually train associates internally. Moreover, most executive programs at law firms are reserved for partners, reports the NLJ.

My hunch is that Milbank had cheaper alternatives. Surely, associates could get the same training locally--say at (gulp) NYU's law and business schools. And if Milbank really wanted to save money on those accounting courses, it could ship associates via subway to a--God forbid--public institution, like New York City's Baruch College.

But obviously, that wouldn't translate into cachet, which, arguably, is the heart of the program. "It's good branding to be associated with Harvard. That has some value," consultant Seeger told the NLJ. "It might also have some recruiting and retention benefits."

An institutional Harvard affiliation for Milbank, and a little Harvard mention on your resume--now, who can put a price on that?

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Photo: Harvard Law Library, courtesy of chensiyuan