Improving Career Opportunities for Florida's Lawyers.

• Author: Tanner, Michael G.

Irecently spoke with a prominent "vintage" lawyer who described how his career developed the way it did. He said he now realizes that two simple advantages, early in his career, made all the difference in enabling him to flourish in our profession.

The first was the advantage of several talented mentors. In a few cases, these mentor relationships were formal; that is, he was "assigned" to each mentor at various times and told to rely on them as resources. But he said most of his mentor relationships were informal and sometimes temporary and indirect. Still, from all of these relationships, he was able to observe a variety of techniques, personal styles, and skills to solve the problems the practice of law presents every day. He said he learned very early that there is rarely only one right way to address a problem and that this lesson has taught him the great value of openness to other points of view.

This lawyer's second key career advantage --which flowed directly from his mentor relationships--was the opportunity to work on a wide variety of legal matters. From this he was able to begin to build his "knowledge base" of a broad range of legal principles, an essential element in developing sound professional judgment.

Many of you reading this will recognize the arc of your own career.

But unfortunately, not every lawyer in Florida has had these advantages and, consequently, some of our colleagues have never fully developed their potential and never found the fulfillment in our profession that they might have found. Some of these lawyers have left the practice of law, and the data shows that this has occurred most often among women and minority lawyers.

The reasons that some young lawyers receive these career advantages and others do not are varied. Sometimes, it's because of biases (some conscious and some not); sometimes it's because of differences in personality (enabling some young lawyers to more easily establish relationships and get better assignments); and sometimes it's simply because of random circumstances. But whatever the reason, the loss to our profession from this unfulfilled potential should be obvious to us. The question is: What can we do about it?

One solution lies with the thousands of employers of Florida's lawyers--private law firms, government agencies, and corporate law...