Shawn Ray White, the incoming general counsel at the Obama Foundation, recalls one aspect of being a summer associate in New York very clearly. She remembers the long, black town car that picked her up at the Manhattan office of Schulte Roth & Zabel to drive her to the Bronx Legal Foundation every morning. In the poorest borough of New York she worked on a fellowship from Schulte Roth on landlord/tenant issues, asbestos, and lead paint in housing. The town car drove her home every night. “I made sure the fancy car dropped my legal assistant at home as well!” she remembers.

Colleagues in the nonprofit organization didn’t mind her unusual form of transportation, she said, since the law firm also provided research, analysis and resources that otherwise would not have been available to the foundation.