In a recent Tampa Bay Times article about the new offering, Florida Bar President Bill Schifino, Jr., said he hopes the mentoring program will evolve into a “virtual hallway” where attorneys can easily discuss case strategies and other matters relating to the practice of law.

Schifino said when he embarked on his legal career three decades ago, he could easily walk into a colleague’s office to discuss various matters relating to his caseload. However, for a myriad of reasons, the legal employment landscape, at least in Florida, has changed markedly since those days.

A 2016 survey by the Florida Bar discovered that one-third of Sunshine State attorneys are solo practitioners, while another 30% work in a firm comprised of between two to five attorneys. That’s where Lawyers Advising Lawyers steps in.

Big Law Mentoring

Meanwhile, lawyering mentoring is nothing new for Matt Trokenheim, Special Counsel with the Newark, New Jersey office of Goldberg Segalia. Trokenheim, who has been practicing law for 12 years, said he has participated in some kind of mentorship program since Day One.

In fact, the lack of an organized mentoring program convinced him to leave his first legal employer after only two years. From there, he spent ten years with Arent Fox, where he enjoyed being both mentored and mentoring less experienced practitioners.

Although his new employer is a large one, the office in which he works is relatively small with 15 lawyers on staff. “Because it’s a small office, informal mentoring is a bit difficult but I’m always conscious of demonstrating a collaborative workstyle,” he said.

While with Arent Fox, Trokenheim said he was formally mentored by two senior lawyers. Both mentors served different purposes, an experience which taught him about what makes the mentoring experience successful.

For example, his first mentor “tried to help me grow as a lawyer and help me find opportunities for advancing my skills while the second was more about navigating my way around the firm and paving my future there,” he said.

Asari Aniagolu, a senior associate with Chadbourne & Parke, LLP in Washington, DC, has been actively involved in mentoring younger lawyers and summer associates since she began practicing in 2010. She has also been mentored by several people along the way within the firms where she was employed.

At her current firm, where Aniagolu has been practicing since 2015, attorneys who have mentored summer associates, like she has, are usually asked to do so again. “Everyone is encouraged to participate,” she said. While she understands the practice of law is extremely demanding of a lawyer’s time and energy, she said its benefits are worth the investment. “Mentorships are the best way to improve as an attorney,” she said.

Why Mentor

Despite the additional time constraints mentoring might place on their schedules, both Trokenheim and Aniagolu agree it’s an extremely worthwhile endeavor. For example, Aniagolu said mentoring “helped me sharpen my management skills as well as my patience, both skills intrinsic to the success of a lawyer.”

Being mentored helped her “develop an even greater love for my profession and helped me sharpen my professional skills,” she said.

For his part, Trokenheim said mentoring brings him a great deal of personal satisfaction because he enjoys helping people. Another benefit of mentoring, he said, is that it affords him the opportunity to impart his values on those junior to him in an attempt to create a work environment he believes is best suited for mutual success. Even though he has been practicing law for 12 years doesn’t mean Trokenheim thinks he is beyond being mentored. “I continue to be a mentee in that I seek the advice of more senior attorneys on a regular basis,” he said.

How to Be Sure the Match is a Good One

Despite their best intentions, sometimes people just aren’t suited to collaborate with one another in a mentor-mentee relationship. Because of that, Trokenheim said meetings between the prospective mentor and mentee to discuss their respective goals for the relationship are intrinsic to its success.

“Personalities are important, too, because you need to get along with your mentor,” he said. Not only should initial discussions about what the mentor and mentee hope to gain from the relationship be held, they should occur throughout the process, he said.

That way, the parties can gauge whether the interaction is accomplishing each person’s goals, especially the mentee’s. Meanwhile, he cautioned mentees not to disparage other lawyers at the firm when conversing with their mentor. While it’s understandable the junior attorney may ask their mentor how to deal with a colleague, speaking badly about them crosses the line, said Trokenheim.

“It’s not appropriate to badmouth my colleague, which goes beyond the pale of the mentor-mentee relationship,” he said. And, if Trokenheim was in control of Big Law mentoring programs, he said he would make at least one huge adjustment to the system. “Big Law should allot some hours to support the mentor/mentee relationship rather than expecting the relationship to be nurtured outside the office or at occasional lunches the firm pays for” so the parties can meet briefly outside the office.

While he applauded Arent Fox, his former employer, for funding those types of lunches, he wishes more would have been done. From her perspective, mentorships are an invaluable aspect of a successful legal career, said Aniagolu. “Mentorships are priceless and can truly shape an attorney at any stage of their career,” she summed.

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer.