Chapter 6 Does Mentoring Matter?

• Library: Accelerating Lawyer Success: How to Make Partner, Stay Healthy, and Flourish in a Law Firm (ABA) (2015 Ed.)

Lawyers who have informal mentors are . . .

• More likely to make partner; and
• More likely to say they are flourishing in their career

. . . than lawyers without informal mentors

Lawyers who have formal mentors are . . .

• Not any more likely to make partner; yet
• More likely to say that they are flourishing in their career

. . . than lawyers without formal mentors

Law-firms have jumped on the mentoring bandwagon, establishing programs and committees to support and promote mentoring within the firm. A 2013 NALP Foundation survey found that 95% of the responding firms with over 500 lawyers have mentoring programs in place, and 86% of those mentoring programs are traditional one-on-one (mentor-mentee) programs.²⁰ All of this effort hinges on the theory that mentoring can result in huge career gains for lawyers. But does mentoring really matter in law-firms? The short answer, which firms and lawyers alike may be gratified to hear, is "yes." In full, however, the answer is more complicated.

Certain mentoring relationships affect career outcomes for lawyers more than others. In our research, we found that when it comes to outcomes like promotion to partner, mentoring relationships that develop organically tend to be much more effective than those created by formal mentoring programs. Different groups of lawyers may benefit from having a larger number of mentors than others. And lawyers with certain personality traits are more likely to see positive outcomes from mentoring relationships. In this chapter, we will explore the intricacies of the mentoring relationship in the law-firm setting—and give advice to associates striving for success on how to create the most beneficial relationships possible.

What Is a Mentor?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a mentor as "someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person.. And, as any constitutional scholar knows, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, or at least the 1976 edition, is golden to at least one Supreme Court justice.²¹ And for those who may not agree with Justice Scalia's dictionary of choice, other dictionaries include a similar definition for this developmental relationship. The Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary states that a mentor is "an experienced and trusted person who gives another person advice and help, esp. related to work or school, over a period of time." And the Oxford Dictionary defines mentor as "an experienced and trusted adviser..

Mentors provide support and knowledge to their proteges in any number of ways. A mentor may act as a role model, or provide acceptance, counseling, and friendship to boost a protege's sense of connection in the workplace.²² A mentor may also provide sponsorship, coaching, protection, challenging assignments, and exposure to enhance her protégé's career.²³

As part of our study, we asked lawyers about their experiences with both informal and formal mentors. We phrased our questions on mentoring relationships to elicit information primarily about mentors who were influential to the lawyer's career. Specifically, we asked how many mentors (informal and formal) they have had who played a significant role in their career development. What we hoped to emphasize with these questions is that it's not enough to just have mentors; you must have mentors who truly impact your career. And even when you feel like these mentors have had an influence on your career, they may have influenced your sense of flourishing rather than your promotion.

Informal mentoring relationships and formal mentoring relationships simply don't come about in the same way. Informal mentoring relationships are those that develop naturally. An informal mentor may be the person a young lawyer feels most comfortable turning to for advice. Perhaps this advisor worked in the office next to the young lawyer, or maybe he was a much more experienced lawyer whom the young lawyer worked with on substantive matters and looked up to for guidance.

In contrast, formal mentoring relationships are established by firms through mentoring programs. When new lawyers join a firm, they are often assigned to at least one formal mentor. Formal mentoring programs naturally differ across firms. In some firms, mentors may simply be given a lunch budget and told to meet once every one to three months. Other firms may require training on mentoring for both the formal mentors and the associates. Still other firms may implement group mentoring programs. Regardless of their specific features, formal mentoring programs all have that one thing in common: It is the firm, and not the mentor or the protege, that establishes the relationship.

The influence of mentoring is not completely unknown. There are decades of research on how mentoring relationships influence younger workers. And, outside of the legal profession, it appears that informal mentoring relationships in general benefit employees' careers more than formal mentoring relationships.²⁴ We wanted to know if lawyers also experienced different outcomes from formal mentoring relationships versus those they sought out on their own.

Informal v. Formal

Since there is a history of research on the importance of mentoring, people (and firms, and organizations) hear the short answer to the question, "Does mentoring matter?" and look to foster mentoring relationships. This understandable emphasis on mentoring has resulted, as we mentioned previously, in the widespread implementation of formal mentoring programs in law-firms. This is not necessarily a problem. There is certainly nothing to suggest that formal mentoring relationships hurt anyone's career, and those relationships may help some lawyers. However, our research bears out in law-firms what has been found in other industries: Although formal mentoring relationships do have some positive effects on young lawyers, they are simply less impactful and oftentimes entirely neutral in helping the young lawyer.

As you may recall from our chapter on who makes partner, 57% of lawyers who made partner reported having three or more informal mentors who influenced their careers, compared to only 26% of lawyers who did not make partner. While having informal mentors predicts flourishing in addition to promotion, having formal mentors predicts flourishing but not making partner. So, while formal mentoring relationships have some positive effects on young lawyers, they don't have as many positive effects as informal mentoring relationships. Think about it this way: Formal mentoring relationships can have a profound influence on your career when cultivated along with informal mentoring relationships. The question is not what kind of mentoring relationship to develop, but rather how to make the most of all of your mentors and all of the resources available to you.

Leveraging the Hand You're Dealt

Who builds informal and formal mentoring relationships most effectively, and what are the different effects of their relationships? First, remember that a mentoring relationship is exactly that—a relationship. While some lawyers expect their mentors to do the heavy lifting, mentoring relationships only succeed when both the mentor and the protege are putting in the effort. So who is making mentoring relationships work? In our study...