Everyone says you need a mentor. Research apparently shows that students and employees are more likely to succeed with a mentor. Makes sense — you get advice from someone who’s been there, hopefully learn from someone’s experiences or tap into their network. Law students and lawyers can “get” a mentor through student organizations, the local bar, or public interest associations. You can build a mentoring relationship with your boss or some other veteran in your field. Wherever you turn, you are bound to find a proponent of mentoring, whether for advice on course selection, job searching, legal writing, etc. Mentoring is everyone’s great idea! But like other great ideas, mentoring often struggles in practice. In law school, I signed up to have a mentor through a local bar association. A mentor was never assigned to me. Once I graduated, I signed up to be a mentor with the bar association. I never got matched with a mentee. Even when a match is successfully made, whether it will work out is mainly a mildly educated guess.

During and after law school I’ve led a mentoring program for high school students and young professionals. Not exactly a public interest (or even PI-to-be) harvesting ground, but the concept and experience have demonstrated one crucial element in successful mentoring: establish your mentoring expectations and guidelines. Few of us know what to expect from a mentor/mentee relationship. How often do you meet? Will you meet in person, talk on the phone, just email? As a mentor, am I expected to plug my mentee into my network? As a mentee, can I ask my mentor for an introduction, ideas for job searching, or advice on coping as a public interest attorney? Oh, and as a public interest attorney in the making, is it okay that I was assigned to someone whose only PI experience is their 1L summer at the public defender? (Networks, that’s why! We’ll get to that in a different post.)

Below are typical challenges to growing mentorship, each of which can be tempered by establishing both mentor/mentee expectations at the outset.

1. Let it be
When I’ve raised the issue of expectations to those in charge of mentoring programs in the legal sector, the response has been pretty uniform: mentoring in law school and in bar associations is informal, things should happen organically, and there’s too much pressure if there are ‘rules.’ Oddly, this area of our profession may be the only one in which results are expected to “happen organically.” Without some sense of expectations that will ‘rule’ the process, actual mentoring may never happen. That helps no one.

2. (Don’t) give it time
Outside of the institutional or program-based mentoring context, however, the organic aspect of mentoring raises even greater challenges — particularly in the PI field. When it comes to personal relationships, too many public interest attorneys are pressed for time, especially now in this economy with fewer staff, more clients and smaller budgets. Law students, too, are typically overstretched among classes, internships, and other projects. It takes time to build a relationship, to meet with a mentor/mentee, to respond to e-mails and phone calls. Another time-intensive aspect: figuring out what you want from mentorship and how you expect to achieve it. If you aren’t engaged in that process at the outset, then expect to spend even more time in an ineffective, disappointing experience.

3. Take a hike
And let’s remember that not everybody wants to mentor, despite their outward interest in mentoring. I presume the ‘old guard’ cares about nurturing ‘young’ talent to eventually take over the sector so they can retire happily knowing they made their mark and left the organization/sector in good hands. Still, how many of us have worked with those older lawyers who talked about building for the future but obviously were not going share their time, knowledge or advice unless we pried it from their cold, dead hands? To be fair, not every mentee is fully invested in the process, either. Signing up for the program doesn’t necessarily mean the mentee-to-be is ready or willing to listen. An introductory conversation about expectations could save half-hearted mentors/mentees from their own frustrations and help each party go back to the drawing board more quickly and perhaps less despondently.

Can I make a confession here? I’m ready to say it: I have never had a mentor in the public interest legal sector.

The people I seek for advice on job searching, career freakouts, “why am I here” type questions don’t work in the public interest sector. They are at private firms or the government. While I respect them and value their opinions, I still feel like something is missing. Granted, I have had a bit of a circuitous path into PI lawyering, so maybe I haven’t met the right people.

But the question is fair: are there any PI mentors still out there? If they are, maybe we need to ask them to step up.

In contrast, my private sector mentor has been incredibly supportive since the first time we met. We used to meet every couple of months or so to discuss my career plans and dreams and provide feedback on random career situations. When I was job searching, he printed his entire Outlook Contacts and highlighted the ones he thought would be helpful. I don’t know if mentors do this on a regular basis, but that was possibly the nicest thing a mentor has ever done for me (besides the lunches at the Source, or course). The public/private issue was completely overshadowed.

The public interest sector appears to be failing to mentor young, PI attorneys and PI attorneys-to-be. It’s an arguable proposition, but jump with me to the more important question: why this failure? Are we just un-mentorable? Undoubtely, there are scores of experienced PI attorneys who would like to mentor us. What’s stopping them? Don’t have the time? Can’t identify the people who need mentoring? Are some disillusioned by the mentees who didn’t follow-up? Do others doubt they have much to offer to the less-experienced?

I’m ready to have that first conversation with you, Public Interest Law, about expectations. This sector must respond to the basic concern that mentoring isn’t a factor right now. Whether it is up to the bars or individuals themselves, there must be a re-emphasis on mentorship. That’s what leading the org, the sector, the cause, the movement is all about.

I suppose that’s why greatrgood was created. Instead of fumbling around in the dark and mentor-less, we can learn from each other. And then we’ll to give it back in our commitment to mentoring!

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About this contributor:  Natasha Quiroga is an education law attorney in Washington, D.C., and formerly was founder and executive director of a U.S.-Bolivia youth empowerment program. Natasha holds a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and a B.A. from University of Texas at Austin. Read more from this contributor

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