Mentoring

Law schools and law firms invest a lot of blood and treasure in recruitment, but how are they doing on mentoring?

How does mentoring differ in SmallLaw from the awkward Biglaw version?

If you are an associate and are fortunate to have one or more “elders” at your firm -- seek them out. You will learn something useful.

If you're an associate at a law firm, ask yourself: do you have a champion, and is that person the right champion?

Andrew L. Sandler from BuckleySandler LLP answers 10 questions for the ATL Interrogatories, sponsored by Lateral Link.

Richard A. Rosenbaum of Greenberg Traurig answers 10 questions for the ATL Interrogatories, sponsored by Lateral Link.

Jeffrey Stone, co-chair of McDermott Will & Emery, participates in the ATL Interrogatories (sponsored by Lateral Link).

Some practical advice for young lawyers looking for a mentor.

Why does it rule to be the general counsel? In-house columnist Susan Moon counts the ways...

Why do Biglaw mentors seek only to promote themselves and give little actual advice? Are mentors at small firms the same?

Should you take that big case that's not in your area of expertise? Not unless you know how to ask for help. Here are some tips from small-firm columnist Brian Tannebaum.

Wherein in-house columnist David Mowry explains why lawyers should have mentors in their lives.

* Roger Clemens was found not guilty on charges of lying to Congress about using steroids. [New York Times] * Why did the ABA Journal kill a feature story on mentoring by Dan Hull and Scott Greenfield? The world may never know, and the world may never see the story. [Simple Justice] * Q: What does a male lawyer do when his female secretary gives him a nice little Father’s Day gift? A: Freak out because random acts of kindness are so unusual, and then write a letter to a New York Times advice columnist. [New York Times] * If you’ll be in D.C. this Thursday, June 21, check out this battle of the law firm bands — a fun event that we’ve covered before, as well as a fundraiser for a worthy cause. [Banding Together 2012] * ATL readers are awesome. You guys have already been a huge help to this court reporter who almost died when he fell into the Chicago River. The family is still taking donations, and now there’s a PayPal link, so it’s even easier to lend a hand to Andrew Pitts and his family. [Kruse Reporters Blog] * A closer look at the continuing rapid progress of predictive coding (or, as skeptics would say, our new computer overlords) in legal discovery. [WSJ Law Blog] * New York’s “hot dog hooker,” Ms. Catherine Scalia (no, not that Scalia), was sentenced to jail. Maybe she should have deigned to sell chocolate milkshakes instead. [Gothamist]

Despite the purported benefits of mentoring, many people who’ve participated in mentoring programs just aren’t fans. How can you create a successful mentoring program?

In order to create something -- something important -- you have to first learn from those that have created ahead of you. So who’s on your list? Who’s the lawyer(s) you aspire to be like?

When you’re stuck at a job you loathe, what can you do to not only survive, but even thrive in it? Try these tips, provided to you by the experienced recruiters at Lateral Link....

Some Gen Y lawyers think their elders want them to fail, are scared of them stealing clients, and only offer criticism for these reasons. I hate to break it to you kids, but I want you to succeed, and my clients aren’t hiring you. They’re not hiring your website or your Facebook Fan Page. Really, they’re not...

These days, it's hard to get a law job, hard to keep a law job, and in Valerie Katz's experience, hard to stomach a law job. And, according to that Wall Street Journal article that everyone posted as a Facebook status, law firms want to keep the number of associates low, work them like dogs, and pay them like, well, high-paid professionals. This means that recent graduates are still screwed. Just when she thought all was lost, however, she found a positive story about law firms. And, of course, because that is how we roll, it involves a small firm....

Specialty bar associations can be great opportunities for in-house lawyers to grow their network and develop their careers. Unlike some mega bar associations, they tend to feel more intimate and collegial, even if their membership numbers are pretty large, because the members share a common interest. A couple of weeks ago, I attended the NAPABA […]

I was never a huge fan of firm mentoring programs. In the days after firms started cracking down on using mentoring funds for hookers and blow, mentoring became distinctly less exciting. For the male associates, it seemed to revolve around mass quantities of red meat and booze. For the female associates, it was a lot […]