|
|
|
 |  |
 |
 |
WSBA Info | |
|
For Lawyers | |
|
For the Public |  |
 |
For the Media |  |
|
CLE |  |
| | Bench Bar Guidelines | News Releases | Publications | |
|
|
April 2007Mentors, Present and FutureEllen Conedera Dial, WSBA President I have been fortunate in my life to have mentors who helped me see the next logical step and who helped identify — even create — opportunities for my professional growth. Those mentors sometimes appeared at unexpected times and in unexpected places. Perhaps my most unusual mentor was a psychology professor who suggested that I drop out of graduate school and take another look at what I wanted in my life when, despite academic success, I was not truly engaged in the work. During law school, professors were important mentors, helping me decide what my direction and goals should be, and helping me gain confidence that the law offered a fascinating career for me. My most influential mentor was Justice Charles Horowitz, the Washington State Supreme Court Justice for whom I clerked after law school — two of the most important years of my professional life. Justice Horowitz helped me see the breadth and depth of the law as a discipline that calls upon us to use our intellects, to be sure, but also to understand how the law intersects with our personal beliefs and values. He shared his passion for the law and for achieving a just outcome. I had intended to return to academia to teach law after my clerkship. Justice Horowitz encouraged me to try practicing law, solving real problems for other people and trying to put some things right that needed fixing. It is impossible to overstate the important role he played in helping to shape my career. He was also a wonderful friend and advisor for many years. The Right Person at the Right Time There is a proverb whose origin I have not been able to confirm, but which speaks clearly to the role of a mentor: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” I think of a mentor as being the right person at the right time — someone who opens a window of opportunity, perhaps in one’s thinking, perhaps in more concrete terms — at just the time when one is prepared to take advantage of it. Starbucks General Counsel Paula Boggs speaks of this phenomenon as a “tipping point” in a career, when having just the right advice at just the right moment can help propel a lawyer to the next important step.1 We may have more than one mentor at any one time, and new mentors will appear as our needs for mentors change. Moreover, new lawyers are not the only ones looking for mentors. I have continued to seek out mentors throughout my career as I have faced new challenges and attempted to create new opportunities for professional growth. The Columbus (Ohio) Bar Association found that experienced lawyers asked for mentoring help when they were changing directions in their careers.2 In Westchester County, New York, a group of veteran lawyers and judges asked for help with the challenges of technology and were paired with new lawyers and law students, resulting in a program now known as “Mentor a Dinosaur.”3 Although I might dispense with the title (at least as applied to myself!), I enthusiastically support the concept. The Challenge to Find Mentors With so many experienced and smart lawyers around us every day, why, then, is it so hard to find mentors? When I began to practice law after my clerkship, I was surprised to learn that finding mentors to help with the day-to-day challenges of a law practice was hard. There were many fine lawyers who cheerfully offered advice and practice tips. (One of the most important tips, I remember, was to give up writing out my memos and briefs on legal pads and learn to dictate — a quaint practice that I used for years until computers rendered it completely obsolete!) I also received sound advice about important lawyering skills — skills such as active listening and remaining calm when the client couldn’t. Advice, however, is not the same as mentoring, and I found it much harder to find someone who could both help me in the moment with my immediate problem and take the longer view of where I was going in my career. My experience those many years ago was not unusual then — and it is not unusual now. A survey conducted recently by the Columbus (Ohio) Bar Association showed that 88 percent of associates who responded believe that mentoring was essential to their career development, but only 27 percent said that there was a mentor available to them when they needed one.4 Why? There are many answers to this question, but most, I believe, are directly related to the demanding nature of a legal career. Most lawyers are very willing — even happy — to take time to give advice. Taking on the role of mentor is something else again. Being effective as a mentor means thinking about the best interest of another person, and taking actions to bring that person along in his or her career. It is an attitude, a way of thinking. And it takes time and careful thought. Most lawyers find that it is difficult enough to do one’s own job well. Devoting serious thought and attention to someone else’s professional life can simply exceed available “bandwidth.” Then, too, differences in age, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences may hamper even the most willing lawyers in their efforts to be successful mentors. Yet having mentors is more important than ever to a lawyer’s sense of satisfaction and achievement. Recognizing the Importance of Mentoring It is gratifying, then, to learn that mentoring is making a serious comeback in the legal profession. Law firms and bar associations across the country are building formal mentoring programs, sometimes involving several mentors for each new lawyer. Mentoring programs are often key elements in programs aimed at increasing diversity in the profession, and in keeping the pipeline of talent into the profession healthy and vital. Georgia and Ohio are now running pilot projects that involve compulsory mentoring and/or new-lawyer training.5 Recognition of the importance of mentoring is driving institutional changes in the way legal jobs are structured, so that lawyers are being asked to become active mentors as a part of their work — and are learning excellent mentoring skills along the way. At the heart of this phenomenon is the fact that being a good lawyer requires wisdom, knowledge, and experience, and that we all need help if we are to be successful. The practice of law is an enterprise that involves life-long learning. We will all find ourselves in need of teachers from time to time. As learners, we will need to be open to the possibility of learning from those around us, recognizing the teachers when they appear. But we also need to be honing our own mentoring skills, looking at our roles not just as helping solve our clients’ problems, but also as helping promote the success of the lawyers around us. Whether or not bar associations or employers adopt formal mentoring programs, we share a responsibility for being active mentors ourselves. Just as it has been important to each of us in our own careers to have mentors, we need to offer mentorship to others whenever we can. Ellen Conedera Dial can be reached at 206-359-8438 or ecdial@gmail.com. If you would like to write a letter to the editor on this topic, please see the instructions found on page 7. NOTES
|
