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Freenome is a diagnostic company looking to expand our Quality Assurance Team. Our company is growing and we are seeking a talent in Florida that can work part-time (20 hours/week): GCP (Good Clinical Practice) Auditor. We are open to considering various backgrounds, with preference to those with experience in startup, diagnostic, biotech, or life science environments. www.freenome.com/careers
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Honestly, as a junior associate, I appreciate any mentor that can understand and guide me through the tough emotions that inevitably come up in this job. Not saying a mentor should be like a therapist by any means, but just acknowledging that it's okay to cry or feeling frustrated without having to worry about the internal politics.
Associate attorney 1, I'm so sorry to hear that 😔 I hope you are able to find someone else that can provide that part of mentorship for you. Also happy to chat if you ever need!
I'm looking forward to becoming more senior and offering that support for juniors. At the very least, when if we can't find that support for ourselves, we can provide it down the line!
Set up weekly calls/meetings to answer questions and talk about best practices. The worst is a mentoring program where the mentor disappears. Juniors want to feel like they are being taught and guided, be someone they want to reach-out to and you will be fine
I think to start you should talk about what general sort of tasks juniors are expected to perform in the practice area/group, talk about how best to do that well, think about what you would have liked to know day 1. Talk about some dumb things you did as a junior and how the world didn’t end. After that they will probably be much more organic with your mentee’s questions and experiences being the focus. They should really be a way for the mentee to know there is someone to talk to. If you accomplish that you are a better mentor than most
Avoid platitudes. Give concrete actionable advice with the understanding that juniors may not even know what to specifically ask yet. They don’t know what they don’t know.
Alot of great suggestions here. Very helpful. Thanks guys! I really want to be a great mentor for my mentee's sake.
Listen with an ear that protects your mentee’s communications with attorney-client privilege. Guide without offering answers, but by helping your mentee make more informed, better decisions. Advise with sensitivity to your mentee’s best interest, honestly assessing your own interest in the matter but according your own interest no value. Put your mentee first and yourself third. Do good without self-benefit.
My mentor and I meet regularly. It’s a chance to check in re: workload, whether I have adequate support (staff, technology, etc), ask for advice about my files, and even just chat. Sometimes we review my billing numbers. I learned a lot about billing from my mentor.
The law school I attended had a formal mentoring program which I really enjoyed. I have since remained in contact with my mentor over the years, even worked together at the same firm for a while. For the past 6 yrs I have been a mentor at the same law school and really enjoy it. For the most part, the student I am assigned is a 3L and we set some reasonable goals but I typically review day-to-day issues and will at times have them do some legal research, participate in an in-house legal discussion or draft memos, etc.
Rising Star
My second firm had this kind of mentorship program. I was a bankruptcy lawyer and ended up being a mentor (not by choice) to a first year corporate associate. The program really didn’t do much. I had no idea what to say, she had no idea what I was talking about. The only point really seemed to be navigating firm politics, but that is impossible given the fact we were in two completely different departments. I’m of the opinion that mentor/mentee “official programs” don’t work and are, to echo a word mentioned above “platitudes.” I think it would be far more effective to convince younger attorneys not to find “mentors” but to learn from the work they do and ask for feedback—and for senior people to be honest without being too rude. To me, official mentoring programs don’t really do much but waste time. But I guess large law firms are good at that!
Rising Star
Well, that makes a huge difference. What I would do is place this mentee of yours on projects you are working on, give him or her work, and be honest with feedback. Really explain why you changed what the mentee did. This I was actually good at, though not in a formal setting. In my practice group a junior associate was distraught because someone asked him to figure out the prepayment penalty’s on a loan. He was an English major, I was an Econ major who went to B-School as well as law school. I gave him a crash course on what present value meant, etc. it’s stuff like that-at least it was to me back in the day. Teaching how to be a lawyer without being rude. Impossible to do on a different practice group though. That’s why I soured on the concept.