Practicing law is challenging enough on a substantive level. An additional challenge that lawyers face lies in not having someone to discuss the personal and professional challenges they routinely confront. For a variety of reasons, lawyers may not have someone down the hall to approach about these things. This is especially true for sole practitioners and in-house counsel.
The Law Society&aposs Practice Management department developed a mentoring program called Mentor Connect to match lawyers looking for help with experienced practitioners able and willing to provide it.
This program is not intended to provide second counsel for mentees’ files or to address substantive law issues, but rather to help mentees with the choices they confront in managing and organizing their practices. We do take similar areas of practice into consideration in the matching process. We ask for a three-month commitment and you can expect to spend up to four hours a month with your mentee which could include coffee/lunch once every 4-6 weeks, a few telephone calls and a few emails.
Mentor Connect has been very successful since its launch and has made more than 50 successful matches to date. We have a regular stream of lawyers looking for mentors.
To meet this demand, we are always recruiting new mentors and we need you too! Please consider signing up to be a mentor.
We are currently looking for mentors in the following areas and with these characteristics:
Location: Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge
Area of law: General practitioners, Civil Litigators, Criminal, Family and Immigration practitioners
Assistance Required: Help in becoming the best lawyer they can be, career advice, work/life balance, office administration, running a small practice, high conflict clients, corporate governance, mature entry, technology.
To view the Mentor Connect application, click
here.
