ABA Section of Business Law
ABA Section of Business Law
Business Law Today
July/August 1999
C’mon, you can do it
Mentor, mentored: It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
By KATHY MORRIS
Morris is the director of the ABA Center for Continuing Legal Education, in Chicago. She is also the founder of Under Advisement Ltd., career counseling for lawyers.
The dictionary defines a mentor as a wise and trusted counselor, teacher or guide. In Greek mythology, Mentor was the friend of Odysseus entrusted with the education of his son, Telemachus. In today’s profession, lawyers have the opportunity, indeed the obligation, to lead by example, to give back to the profession by mentoring junior colleagues as wise and trusted counselors, teachers and guides.
Wisdom requires scholarly knowledge and insightful judgment; trust permits reliance on and confidence in another’s ability and integrity. Counselors advise on professional and personal matters, teachers impart knowledge and skill through instruction, guides show the way. Mentoring is a difficult endeavor and a weighty, worthwhile responsibility.
Yet mentors are all too rare. In today’s profession, good mentors are a precious commodity indeed. Too often, even in a firm of hundreds, the same handful of individuals are the too few partners who make themselves available in the role of mentor, and hence are repeatedly sought out by the many associates in need of support and guidance. Not only does this impose on the time and will of those particular partners, it sends the ill-received message that the more senior lawyers don’t really care about the associates’ progression. That is a counterproductive, demotivating and disturbing message in a service profession based on client and ethical responsibilities.
And while junior lawyers in large firms have difficulty finding a mentor in their midst, it’s an even heavier burden for those in small and solo practices or less traditional work settings to find the kind of wise, trusted counsel they too need. This is where professional organizations and bar associations enter the picture to afford growth and guidance.
Conceptually, being a mentor doesn’t sound terribly challenging. Yet, as a practical matter, even though we communicate for a living, effective mentoring remains mainly beyond the grasp of today’s lawyer. Whether because of the compression of time, pervasive technology, business constraints or a sense that learning at the knee of others is a costly, slow and outmoded method, we have failed to prioritize mentoring and have been remiss in developing the skills to fulfill that key role.
It’s never too early to give back to others or too late to learn how. Tips for both parties to the relationship, mentors and mentored alike, follow.
First, suggestions for the mentors:
• Do engage in the mentoring relationship prepared to exert energy and, from time to time, even to experience frustration.
• Don’t expect the mentored to adopt your precise style or comport themselves in the very shadow of your image.
• Do make yourself available at identifiable times and for briefer, impromptu questions.
• Don’t frustrate by being unavailable or inaccessible, impatient or amnesiac about how hard the practice of law in the earlier years truly is.
• Do work consciously on your listening skills and create an atmosphere in which inquiries can be freely posed.
• Don’t avoid the harder questions requiring judgment, but avoid being judgmental.
• Do accord due respect and confidentiality, if requested.
• Don’t give up. Even if your efforts don’t show tangible or consistent results, remember that mentoring is a long-term process and an important act, in and of itself.
Second, suggestions for those being mentored:
• Do be mindful of your mentor’s schedule.
• Don’t schedule a mentoring meeting and fail to show up on time.
• Do take initiative: Your mentor is likely to be as busy or busier than you are.
• Don’t take offense if your mentor has to cancel a session or is a bit difficult to reach from time to time.
• Do express gratitude for your mentor’s involvement and energies on your behalf.
• Don’t take for granted how hard it is for most lawyers to mentor others.
• Do your part to develop the relationship, so that your mentor will trust you and embrace his or her role in your career.
• Don’t quarrel with the advice your mentor provides — listen well, reach across your differences to accept the guidance you sought and need.
There’s no question that the mentoring relationship, like all personal and professional human interactions, is a challenge. But didn’t we become lawyers, in part, to stretch beyond our capacities, to be problem solvers, to help others, and to impart information well? Mentoring is work truly suited to us, if we decide to prioritize it and commit ourselves to it.
Your workplace may be large enough to provide you, by the numbers, the opportunity for a mentor but may lack a formal system for matching you with one. In that case, you need to take steps to find a mentor unless you’ve been lucky enough to fall into such a relationship through the work-assignment system or random good fortune. Watch for a more senior lawyer whose style you admire, who seems to share your focus, whether it be on excellent drafting skills, strategic problem solving, client relationship building, or creative negotiations. Engage him or her in brief conversation, seek out a work assignment if possible, extend a lunch invitation. At some point, the mentoring relationship may develop naturally — but if not, don’t be reluctant to spell out your interest in gaining a mentor.
If the person consents, try to articulate some parameters and goals together, such as, set monthly meetings to go over questions you’ll catalog throughout the month. The key once the mentoring relationship begins is to honor it and accord it value—from both the mentor’s and the mentored’s perspectives.
If you’re not in a firm, company or organization of sufficient size or if you prefer a mentor who is outside your office, professional organizations and bar associations are among your best bets for finding mentoring relationships. Again, if no formal system exists, volunteer for a role that will bring you in closer proximity with more senior lawyers, such as serving on a relevant subcommittee, as a planner of a meeting or event, or as a CLE speaker in your practice area. The prospective mentors must concurrently watch for opportunities to enlist those their junior in the activities of the group, and be willing to reach out inclusively to bring a fellow lawyer along, professionally.
Many mentoring relationships fail, once formed, because they build no momentum and sustain no force. Perhaps if lawyers better understood the mentoring process — that of reaching across differences to guide others to do their best, rather than attempting to shape others in one’s precise image — the process would better sustain itself.
All lawyers are well advised to borrow a technique for mentoring used by litigators in trial skills training sessions, known as the NITA method, from the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. The method is simple, and two fold: first tell someone what they did well, then suggest — with concrete examples — what they could have done differently. This technique avoids many of the pitfalls that will derail a mentoring relationship fast, like condescension or abject criticism or the notion that you can teach someone how to practice law by regaling them with a war story or suggesting a course of conduct right for the mentor but not necessarily calibrated for the mentored.
A vignette may best illustrate the mentoring challenge, and the way this technique applies:
Lee was at a bar association meeting. New to the Section and a bit overwhelmed, Lee attended a CLE session and at the break, sought out a more senior lawyer from the same home town to ask a quick question about the local application of the regulation that was under discussion by the presenters. The prospective mentor, Cynthia, greeted Lee warmly when introduced, and proceeded to mention a few other members in attendance who were also from their home town. Lee then posed the question about the regulation, and Cynthia responded lightly, "Now there’s a question — look it up when we get home, and call me with the answer." The program resumed, but Lee didn’t stay for the rest of the session, or attend any of the social functions later in the day.
Using the NITA method, what did Cynthia do well, and what could she have done differently?
• Cynthia created rapport with Lee with a nice greeting, and by mentioning the names of others Lee might also know or want to meet; she could have offered to introduce Lee to the other local lawyers at the reception following the CLE program.
• Cynthia stayed with the conversation beyond the introductory remarks rather than moving along to speak with peers; she could, however, have acknowledged the question as worthwhile and invited Lee to call her on returning to the office to confer a bit further.
Had Cynthia shifted her response slightly, Lee might have remained at the session, learned more, stayed engaged in Section events, and, with the simple yet affirmative effort to reach out and ask a single question, have begun a career-changing mentoring relationship.
In mentoring as in all things, small changes can make big differences, which is what mentoring, in the end, is all about. Make a difference. Be a mentor. Inspire another lawyer and help the profession, too, by being a wise and trusted counselor, teacher and guide.
