The Department’s Honors Attorney Program offers new law graduates (and recent law graduates completing judicial clerkships or fellowships) a unique opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of the Department’s diverse law practice. 

During the two-year program, honors attorneys rotate once in the Department's Office of the General Counsel and in up to five  Chief Counsels' Offices of the Department’s operating administrations.

Rotations provide each honors attorney with substantive and challenging assignments across a wide spectrum of legal fields.  Honors attorneys find themselves working in practice areas such as administrative, aviation, litigation, environmental law, constitutional law, torts, legislation, labor and employment law, and contract and procurement law.

In addition to legal work, honors attorneys meet for lunch weekly to discuss current work assignments and program matters.  The lunches also provide time for in-house training opportunities in such wide ranging issues as the Freedom of Information Act, DOT's crisis management procedures, and regulation drafting, as well as many other topics relevant to the practice of law at a cabinet level agency. 

Honors Attorneys also make on-site trips to gain exposure to the transportation community.  In the past few years, honors attorneys have visited a major air carrier's ground operations at Washington Reagan-National Airport, Washington METRO’s command center and railcar maintenance facility, the automobile crash test facility at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an on-site inspection of semi truck, and rode on the Federal Rail Administration's track-test train.