The number one problem with mentoring programs in law firms is
this: nobody knows what to do with them.
Hooray for Mentoring! Except…
Here’s my take: if you’re not using the opportunity for mentoring
properly then frankly, just don’t take it up in the first
place.
Okay, so your firm’s got a mentoring program.
Once you hear about it you think “Yes, there’s a mentoring
programme! Excellent.”
Then your mentor is allocated to you (or you choose them if
you’re really lucky).
You have your first meeting and it goes something like this:
You: “Well, “so what do we talk about?”
Them: “I don’t know, what do you want to talk about?”
You: “I don’t know, stuff?”
Them: “Right, okay, well see you next time.”
And that’s the first and last mentoring meeting you have.
Capitalise on your Mentoring Program
If you are fortunate enough to have a mentor who is a senior lawyer
in your firm, then you need to know how to capitalise on that
situation.
Otherwise you’re wasting their time. You are certainly wasting
your time.
You are also disrespecting them by not capitalising on the offer
they have made to be an open book for you to learn from.
Here’s my take: if you’re not using the opportunity for
mentoring properly then frankly, just don’t take it up in the first
place.
Of course, some firms have compulsory mentoring, and I
understand why they do it. But it’s a terrible idea because
inevitably it results in participants who don’t really want to be
there and don’t know what they’re doing.
So if you have a mentor let’s explore a few ways you can benefit
from the opportunity.
#1 – Politics and People
No – not Trump. Nor Turnbull.
Instead, internal politics in your firm. Your mentor can help
you understand the lie of the land.
Firms are political creatures. It does you good to know who are
the powerful partners and who are not. Of course they’re all
partners, but who are the people who really make the decisions?
Who are the people who have successful practices?
Who are the people to model yourself off if you are aspiring to
become a partner in that firm?
Of course you might not get all of this information and I’m not
saying that your mentoring should become a big gossip session.
Instead, think about this: where can you learn the most from the
people around you?
Within this category you also have a chance to find out who you
should watch closely. You have a lot of valuable assets in the
people in your firm and the experience that they have. Your mentor
is just one opportunity.
You might look for people are are good at:
getting clients
serving clients
delivering technical advice in simple ways
communicating
business operations
That last one is a serious contender for “most valuable
information” – who are the best business owners? Who are the people
who really know how to run a business?
These are the people you can be learning from by observation.
Not necessarily one on one, you might not have that access, but
through watching what they do, how they do it and figuring out why
they are considered to be at the top of their game.
#2 – Where do you Need to Improve?
Mentors aren’t just there to puff you up and give you encouragement
– sometimes their best purpose is to point out areas of concern.
Your job is to give them permission to be honest to you about areas
for improvement in your practice.
What do they think you could be doing better? What are you doing
well?
That sort of continual improvement is far more effective and
useful than the annual review process (which is largely a waste of
time designed to make HR happy because it means they’ve got forms
they can put on your file).
What is a useful process for growth is if you give your mentor
permission to assess and reassess and help and grow you in those
areas in which you might have some weakness.
But perhaps it also gives them permission to identify those
areas of weakness if you’re struggling to have enough
self-awareness in that department.
#3 – Benchmarking
How are you going compared to people?
Do you know? You might not have that sort of information. Your
mentor, if they’re senior enough, may be able to give you some
feedback.
What is the perception of you and does it align with the
perception that you’re trying to get? Are you a safe pair of hands?
Are people concerned about your work in some way?
That degree of honesty is so important because you may find that
you’re inadvertently developing a reputation that you don’t want to
be developing.
Of course, finding out information about this particular topic
comes down to the relationship you have with your mentor. They need
to be comfortable to give you that kind of information and they
need to know you well enough to do it.
If you are not honest and open with them, they won’t be honest
and open with you. So a little bit of reciprocal trust can go a
long way, especially when asking for honest feedback. A little bit
of openness from you and vulnerability can be helpful, and of
course respectful questioning.
Now within the context of both benchmarking and areas for
improvement, I want to say that you don’t need to accept everything
your mentor says to you.
Your mentor is not there to tell you exactly what to do, nor are
they always right. Your mentor is there to be a bit of a confidant,
to be someone who gives you honest feedback, to be someone who can
give you big picture strategic decision making.
They might help you implement, but they won’t do the
implementation for you.
Your job is to listen to them respectfully, to hear what they
have to say and to take the things that you think are extremely
valuable to you and run with them.
But you don’t have to do everything.
It’s not the same as your boss telling you to do something, the
nature of mentoring is more consultation and feedback, but it’s up
to you to actually take steps. If you are someone who has had a
weakness identified, what are you going to do? How are you going to
break that down and grow in that area?
What are you going to learn? Perhaps you need to buy a book,
perhaps you need to take a course, perhaps you just need to focus
more attentively on something in particular. But, feel free to
ignore your mentor’s advice if you think that that’s a good
idea.
And last, but not least…
#4 – Consistency and Planning
Consistency in a relationship, I’ve mentioned it before. You need
to have a consistent and regular meetings with your mentor.
It’s not a ticking the box situation where “oh we’re supposed to
have 10 meetings”.
Set those meetings up regularly.
Know what you’re going to discuss in advance.
Perhaps you email them “Today, I’d like to discuss…” or “next
week at our meeting, I’d really like to discuss the following
things…”.
That way you don’t forget, you don’t get overrun by other stuff,
and you give them a little bit of time to think so that they can
offer you some real value.
Consistent, planned and organised mentoring relationships will
propel you further, faster than ad hoc pieces of disorganised
drivel.
If you want to make the most of your mentoring relationship have
a plan.
But what to plan if you have no ideas? You know by now that I
think the most value you can get in terms of mentoring is going to
be your legal skills.
So perhaps you might want to round out your
mentoring in those core areas of legal skills:
professional growth
communication
marketing and networking
business skills.
Perhaps they can help you develop a plan to grow in those
areas?
If you want to grow your practice, how are you going to do it?
What areas do you want to do it in? What’s the strategy you’re
going to use to do it?
If they’re a partner, the chances are they have a practice,
which means at some point, they’ve got to got some clients. How do
they do it? What did they do? What would they do now? What did they
do wrong? What were their mistakes? How can you learn from what
they did wrong in the past? What’s their best piece of advice?
This is the kind of information that’s useful to get from a
mentor.
But Be Careful
There’ll be some of these things that you can and cannot discuss.
You need to be cautious about confidentiality.
Many internal firm mentoring programs are not confidential. What
you report to your mentor might get reported to other people inside
the firm.
So you need to be cautious about that and you need to trust your
mentor an appropriate amount to ensure you’re getting the most out
of the relationship.
In a Nutshell
So, these tips aren’t too hard to follow, right?
If you have the opportunity for mentoring, take it but use it
properly. Otherwise it’s an asset that you’re really not utilising
to best advantage.
Don’t hesitate to offer some further advice in the comments if
you found a really great way of enjoying the mentoring process.
The number one problem with mentoring programs in law firms is
this: nobody knows what to do with them.
Hooray for Mentoring! Except…
Here’s my take: if you’re not using the opportunity for mentoring
properly then frankly, just don’t take it up in the first
place.
Okay, so your firm’s got a mentoring program.
Once you hear about it you think “Yes, there’s a mentoring
programme! Excellent.”
Then your mentor is allocated to you (or you choose them if
you’re really lucky).
You have your first meeting and it goes something like this:
You: “Well, “so what do we talk about?”
Them: “I don’t know, what do you want to talk about?”
You: “I don’t know, stuff?”
Them: “Right, okay, well see you next time.”
And that’s the first and last mentoring meeting you have.
Capitalise on your Mentoring Program
If you are fortunate enough to have a mentor who is a senior lawyer
in your firm, then you need to know how to capitalise on that
situation.
Otherwise you’re wasting their time. You are certainly wasting
your time.
You are also disrespecting them by not capitalising on the offer
they have made to be an open book for you to learn from.
Here’s my take: if you’re not using the opportunity for
mentoring properly then frankly, just don’t take it up in the first
place.
Of course, some firms have compulsory mentoring, and I
understand why they do it. But it’s a terrible idea because
inevitably it results in participants who don’t really want to be
there and don’t know what they’re doing.
So if you have a mentor let’s explore a few ways you can benefit
from the opportunity.
#1 – Politics and People
No – not Trump. Nor Turnbull.
Instead, internal politics in your firm. Your mentor can help
you understand the lie of the land.
Firms are political creatures. It does you good to know who are
the powerful partners and who are not. Of course they’re all
partners, but who are the people who really make the decisions?
Who are the people who have successful practices?
Who are the people to model yourself off if you are aspiring to
become a partner in that firm?
Of course you might not get all of this information and I’m not
saying that your mentoring should become a big gossip session.
Instead, think about this: where can you learn the most from the
people around you?
Within this category you also have a chance to find out who you
should watch closely. You have a lot of valuable assets in the
people in your firm and the experience that they have. Your mentor
is just one opportunity.
You might look for people are are good at:
getting clients
serving clients
delivering technical advice in simple ways
communicating
business operations
That last one is a serious contender for “most valuable
information” – who are the best business owners? Who are the people
who really know how to run a business?
These are the people you can be learning from by observation.
Not necessarily one on one, you might not have that access, but
through watching what they do, how they do it and figuring out why
they are considered to be at the top of their game.
#2 – Where do you Need to Improve?
Mentors aren’t just there to puff you up and give you encouragement
– sometimes their best purpose is to point out areas of concern.
Your job is to give them permission to be honest to you about areas
for improvement in your practice.
What do they think you could be doing better? What are you doing
well?
That sort of continual improvement is far more effective and
useful than the annual review process (which is largely a waste of
time designed to make HR happy because it means they’ve got forms
they can put on your file).
What is a useful process for growth is if you give your mentor
permission to assess and reassess and help and grow you in those
areas in which you might have some weakness.
But perhaps it also gives them permission to identify those
areas of weakness if you’re struggling to have enough
self-awareness in that department.
#3 – Benchmarking
How are you going compared to people?
Do you know? You might not have that sort of information. Your
mentor, if they’re senior enough, may be able to give you some
feedback.
What is the perception of you and does it align with the
perception that you’re trying to get? Are you a safe pair of hands?
Are people concerned about your work in some way?
That degree of honesty is so important because you may find that
you’re inadvertently developing a reputation that you don’t want to
be developing.
Of course, finding out information about this particular topic
comes down to the relationship you have with your mentor. They need
to be comfortable to give you that kind of information and they
need to know you well enough to do it.
If you are not honest and open with them, they won’t be honest
and open with you. So a little bit of reciprocal trust can go a
long way, especially when asking for honest feedback. A little bit
of openness from you and vulnerability can be helpful, and of
course respectful questioning.
Now within the context of both benchmarking and areas for
improvement, I want to say that you don’t need to accept everything
your mentor says to you.
Your mentor is not there to tell you exactly what to do, nor are
they always right. Your mentor is there to be a bit of a confidant,
to be someone who gives you honest feedback, to be someone who can
give you big picture strategic decision making.
They might help you implement, but they won’t do the
implementation for you.
Your job is to listen to them respectfully, to hear what they
have to say and to take the things that you think are extremely
valuable to you and run with them.
But you don’t have to do everything.
It’s not the same as your boss telling you to do something, the
nature of mentoring is more consultation and feedback, but it’s up
to you to actually take steps. If you are someone who has had a
weakness identified, what are you going to do? How are you going to
break that down and grow in that area?
What are you going to learn? Perhaps you need to buy a book,
perhaps you need to take a course, perhaps you just need to focus
more attentively on something in particular. But, feel free to
ignore your mentor’s advice if you think that that’s a good
idea.
And last, but not least…
#4 – Consistency and Planning
Consistency in a relationship, I’ve mentioned it before. You need
to have a consistent and regular meetings with your mentor.
It’s not a ticking the box situation where “oh we’re supposed to
have 10 meetings”.
Set those meetings up regularly.
Know what you’re going to discuss in advance.
Perhaps you email them “Today, I’d like to discuss…” or “next
week at our meeting, I’d really like to discuss the following
things…”.
That way you don’t forget, you don’t get overrun by other stuff,
and you give them a little bit of time to think so that they can
offer you some real value.
Consistent, planned and organised mentoring relationships will
propel you further, faster than ad hoc pieces of disorganised
drivel.
If you want to make the most of your mentoring relationship have
a plan.
But what to plan if you have no ideas? You know by now that I
think the most value you can get in terms of mentoring is going to
be your legal skills.
So perhaps you might want to round out your
mentoring in those core areas of legal skills:
professional growth
communication
marketing and networking
business skills.
Perhaps they can help you develop a plan to grow in those
areas?
If you want to grow your practice, how are you going to do it?
What areas do you want to do it in? What’s the strategy you’re
going to use to do it?
If they’re a partner, the chances are they have a practice,
which means at some point, they’ve got to got some clients. How do
they do it? What did they do? What would they do now? What did they
do wrong? What were their mistakes? How can you learn from what
they did wrong in the past? What’s their best piece of advice?
This is the kind of information that’s useful to get from a
mentor.
But Be Careful
There’ll be some of these things that you can and cannot discuss.
You need to be cautious about confidentiality.
Many internal firm mentoring programs are not confidential. What
you report to your mentor might get reported to other people inside
the firm.
So you need to be cautious about that and you need to trust your
mentor an appropriate amount to ensure you’re getting the most out
of the relationship.
In a Nutshell
So, these tips aren’t too hard to follow, right?
If you have the opportunity for mentoring, take it but use it
properly. Otherwise it’s an asset that you’re really not utilising
to best advantage.
Don’t hesitate to offer some further advice in the comments if
you found a really great way of enjoying the mentoring process.
Read more https://nairalaw.com/getting-the-best-out-of-having-a-mentor/