Mentors - The More, The Merrier
November 30, 2007
New Matter, Official Publication of The Intellectual Property Law Section of the State Bar of California
by Nan E. Joesten, Farella Braun + Martel LLP
One of the most valuable assets you can have in your career is good mentoring, and preferably you will get that from more than one mentor over the course of your practice. As lawyers we have spent many years in the classroom (and perhaps elsewhere) before coming to this profession, and the fortunate among us remember vividly those teachers who helped change the course of our lives with their wisdom, wit, and sincere interest in us, their students. The same can be said for our progress in the legal profession. There are numerous lawyers that we hold in high esteem due to their generosity of time, advice, and encouragement along the way. This is the essence of mentoring: according to Webster's, a mentor is a "trusted counselor or guide," a tutor or coach. The original Mentor appeared in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, entrusted to his friend Mentor his palace and the education of his son Telemachus when Odysseus went off to fight in the Trojan War. While the subject of increasing focus in the legal profession, mentoring is hardly new -- Aristotle once mentored Alexander the Great.
The goal of mentoring is to enhance professional development through effective personal relationships. Mentoring is critical in the legal profession, where the start-up curve is steep and experience and judgment play such a critical part in one's ability to be a great lawyer. It's especially important in a fast-paced and rapidly changing substantive area of law such as intellectual property. Mentoring brings with it a plethora of benefits in terms of accelerating the progress of new attorneys, expanding the comfort level of lawyers in trying out or applying their growing skills to the challenges of their clients, and improving the retention of lawyers in the profession. There are also potential rewards for the attorney serving as a mentor: personal satisfaction, increased loyalty from grateful junior colleagues, appreciation from peers, greater influence within the organization. All of these can have a positive and direct impact on the bottom line.
Challenges to Mentoring
If mentoring is such a great idea, why don't we hear more about successful mentoring experiences? At one level, many lawyers struggle with invariably crowded schedules, and we have difficulty finding time to act as mentors. And let's face it, some lawyers are better mentors than others. Mentoring has typically been thought of as a one-on-one relationship in the workplace, most often between a junior attorney and a more experienced attorney. While we often hope these informal working relationships develop naturally over the course of cases or transactions, many organizations have formal mentoring programs where junior and senior attorneys are "assigned" to one another in a mentee-mentor relationship for some period of time. Often the junior attorneys have input in the selection of a mentor, which can improve the odds of a successful experience, but not always. When schedules pick up, or the relationship never really takes off, the junior lawyer must cast about for other options. In a scenario where the junior lawyer is also a woman or diverse attorney or both, the risk of having no mentor increases.
Multiple Mentoring
One solution to the dilemma of not having any (or enough) natural mentors, or not having a designated mentoring relationship be productive, is to create more opportunities for mentoring. The problem is a shortage of good mentors, especially in organizations where senior women or diverse attorneys are in short supply. Developing those coveted mentoring opportunities using the traditional one-to-one model can be difficult, because the most obvious way to increase mentoring is to expand the number of one-on-one mentoring relationships in which the most effective mentors engage, which time pressures frequently preclude.
Multiple mentoring is an alternative that addresses the pressing need for mentees to have exposure to mentors where an organization has more of the former than the latter. Admittedly, multiple mentoring doesn't offer the benefit of one-on-one mentoring in attempting to directly address one mentee's needs without a pre-set agenda. Still, it is a model that creates opportunities for several relationships to grow while emphasizing teaching and leveraging the strengths of expertise. It also lends itself to developing mentoring relationships through participation in industry or legal associations, such as the State Bar's Intellectual Property Law Section. Attending the annual Spring Meeting, or becoming active on one of the seven Standing Committees provides a great entrée to meeting more experienced attorneys who are always interested in having new members become involved, and in sharing their expertise.
Mentoring Circles
One style of multiple mentoring that can be readily adapted to a law firm or law department setting is the creation of a mentoring circle. In a mentoring circle, a group of mentees typically meet with one mentor. This is useful where there are fewer available mentors than mentees, but the benefits extend beyond that. The experienced mentor gently leads the group and offers guidance and advice on both organizational matters and fundamental core competencies of practicing law. A skilled mentor should also be able to encourage the circle to build upon their individual experiences and enthusiasm to help each person progress in their legal careers and comfort within the organization. The participants in the circle benefit from learning a variety of perspectives or approaches to issues rather than only the mentor's point of view, and hone their own mentoring skills in the process.
Setting Expectations
Multiple mentoring arrangements offer the benefit of increased opportunity to build natural relationships that can themselves be the jumping off point for informal mentoring outside of a planned relationship. But as with any undertaking, the success of any multiple mentoring endeavor begins with an assessment of the expectations of all the participants: what does each person hope to accomplish from the process? what particular issues will the group focus on? how will the group deal with any barriers to effectiveness that emerge during the course of the group's sessions? what does each person expect to contribute to the process? what does each person expect of the other group members? how will the group assess if the process is beneficial?
Creating The Ground Rules
Once the individual members have considered these topics individually, it is time for the group to come together to reach agreement on their fundamental ground rules. For nearly any mentoring experiences to be successful, participants need to feel that the group is a "safe space" for sharing ideas, where one's participation and input does not result in any negative repercussions in future opportunities, performance assessment, and the like. A guarantee of confidentiality is essential, and multiple mentoring groups typically agree that what happens in the mentoring sessions, stays in those sessions. An effective mentoring experience requires the participants to trust one another, and maintaining confidences is paramount to developing that trust.
Likewise, the group must make a commitment to regular attendance at the agreed-upon meeting times and venues. The group can decide for itself whether sessions are most productive when held in the office during business hours, over lattes at the local coffee shop, or perhaps in the privacy of someone's home over a shared meal. Where mentees are separated by geography, or the infrequency of gathering at professional meetings, groups may want to consider regular teleconferencing in between face-to-face sessions. No matter where and how the group decides to gather, it's important to honor the schedule and participate regularly.
Off and Running
The initial meeting should allow for a review of individual expectations for the group, and agreement on the group's goals and ground rules. Once underway, participants should be committed to following up on previous discussions where appropriate, reporting back on new experiences or learnings, or evaluating the relative impact of new strategies that a group member might have tried based on previous mentoring. As the group becomes more comfortable with one another, intermediate evaluations may be helpful to identify whether objectives are being met, what has worked best, and how the process can be further improved with a mid-course correction.
While no substitute for informal mentoring, established multiple mentoring opportunities can help bridge that gap for organizations that are short on effective mentors and long on attorneys seeking critical mentoring support. So what are you waiting for? The more mentors, the merrier!
Nan Joesten is a partner in the Business Litigation and Intellectual Property and Technology Departments at Farella Braun & Martel LLP in San Francisco, California, where she is the partner co-chair of the firm's Professional Development Committee. Her practice focuses on patent litigation and complex technology disputes. She can be reached at njoesten@fbm.com.