Texas Bar Journal October 2023

A Solid Foundation

The power and impact of mentoring.

By Karen Bennett

A business woman sitting at a desk talking to a woman sitting
across from her. The business woman is wearing a beige jacket and a
white blouse underneath. She has curly brown hair. The woman across from

her has long brown hair and is wearing a black jacket. We only see the
back of her

What are the goals for mentoring new attorneys? As a supervisor, you want the new attorney to be successful and an example of what you perceive an attorney should be in our profession. As a supervisor, you want to train others to continue the sustainability of your dockets. You want them to help in the short term and to be the succession plan for you one day when you decide to slow down or retire. What does a mentor really do? Is it like one of those questions—I know it when I see it?

In a trucking expert’s deposition earlier this year, he said there are four steps to training truck drivers:

(1) Educate

(2) Demonstrate

(3) Assess

(4) Deploy

This made me stop and think about the similarities to mentoring new attorneys.

EDUCATE
New attorneys have already endured law school. We can check off that box. But does law school “educate” a new attorney on how to practice law? Absolutely not! Law school trains an attorney on learning the law, interpreting the law, understanding the law, and where to find the law. Law school does not tell a new attorney how to practice law day in and day out. There are ethics classes in law school, but those classes do not truly teach an attorney on the basics of dealing with everyone in the legal profession. There is still an enormous amount of learning to do once an attorney first starts to practice law. There is a lot to learn and be educated about that is not in a book. New attorneys need guidance in these areas:

How to deal with clients
How to deal with opposing counsel
How to be respectful to those in our profession
How to evaluate a file
How to manage time
How to work up a file/close a deal
How to document your file
How to close out a matter
How to prepare yourself for every hearing/meeting/deposition
How to manage your files/docket
How to check and double check yourself 24/7
How to manage your calendar
How to respect your staff
The list goes on and on

DEMONSTRATE
The supervising attorney needs to show the new attorney how to practice law, including how to prepare for hearings, depositions, trials, and how to handle arguments and personalities at those events. There is a bigger obligation as a supervisor—to teach respect and dignity. Our profession is the subject of many jokes, and you can see facial expressions at times when you tell someone that you are an attorney. We, as a profession, need to spend more time teaching respect for each other and acting as professionals. We can all agree to disagree on issues, but attorneys can carry themselves as professionals when doing so. New attorneys need to learn that to “get respect means to give respect.” I was told early in my career that I was to respect everyone from the judge on the bench to those that swept the floors. If the new attorneys think they only have to respect the “important people,” then their true colors will come back to haunt them in the future. I apologize for the rant on this issue, but this is an issue that is dear to my heart—respect for each other and respect for the profession.

The mentor will need to demonstrate the bullet points above to the new attorneys. It is a lot of work but is crucial to the mentoring process. Just as a young boy watches his father to learn how to be patient and fish, the mentor needs to be there every step of the way so the new attorney can soak up that wisdom.

ASSESS
Everyone has their own style and their own art of persuasion, and each person needs to be comfortable in how they handle that aspect of practicing law. Confidence is of utmost importance. Allowing new attorneys to handle themselves professionally and with the confidence they need to succeed is important. There are many ways to approach the issue such as when a parent raises a child. Perhaps one of the hardest issues of supervising other attorneys is to take a step back and realize that others can approach issues differently, and to let them. Just because you, the supervising attorney, have always approached an issue in a certain way does not mean it cannot be handled differently. Being a mentor requires patience and being supportive of new attorneys. It requires the ability to encourage others to succeed. As the mentor, you want mentees to want to succeed and make your firm grow.

DEPLOY
The best way to learn is to participate and not sit at a desk watching others. Let your mentees learn their own style with confidence. As the supervisor, you are there to encourage and be the backstop for bouncing off ideas. Give them more responsibility on the files that they handle. Let them take the lead in meetings, depositions, and hearings. Once they get a little confidence under their belt, they will no longer need you there to look over their shoulder. Yes, there will be hiccups and setbacks, just like attorneys with 30-plus years of experience, but the new associates will never forget who trained them. They will never forget the first expert deposition that you let them take the lead on. They will never forget the time that you took to answer their questions and proofread their arguments for trial. Then one day, they will share those same words to the new attorney that they train.

In large firms, there are some personalities that are a better fit to serve as a mentor. Selecting the right mentor for each associate is important. Do not assign an associate to someone if that associate does not have the personality or drive to train and help that new attorney grow in their career. Some people are just better cut out for it than others. Patience and drive are the two keys.

I surveyed some attorneys to see what they thought was important for a mentor:

Patience;
Availability for questions;
Availability to teach the practical side of law—what good is making the best grades in law school when you have no idea how it translates into practice;
Mentoring non-work-related issues—sometimes a new lawyer needs a partner to say “go home and be with your family” and “take care of your health”;
Letting me fail on issues that were later fixable, and letting me run with issues that no one had any idea whether they would work out;
Finding things that play to my strength and giving me those opportunities, and then celebrating my successes on those opportunities (a new lawyer is told they are awful by judges, opposing counsel, and clients all the time, so having my bosses celebrating my successes went a long way in fueling my drive to be a better attorney);
Transparency and not balking at my one million questions;
Humility/not being pompous;
Having an open-door policy and fielding any and all questions you have, no matter how embarrassed you feel to ask them;
Giving you the ability and opportunity to run with cases so you can actually learn how to work a case up instead of taking a backseat to everything—preparing motions, communicating with clients and adjusters and opposing attorneys, preparing evaluations, etc.;
Letting you join the meetings and including you in discussions with other parties/adjusters/etc., so you can keep learning;
Leading by example and earning respect and loyalty by showing that they also put in hard work and are involved every step of the way;
Praising you in front of other parties/adjusters/clients/etc. when things go well, and not throwing you under the bus when things do not go so well; and
Taking an interest in your life outside of work and giving you support, sympathy, and grace when things get tough—both personally and professionally—and you feel like you can talk to them and be honest about what’s going on. How things are going in personal life affects how things go professionally, so it’s nice to have mentors who actually care about you as a person outside of the office.

Finally, an important aspect of mentoring is making sure that the new attorney knows that they are making a difference and growing. No one wants to be stagnant. That causes boredom and indifference. Being a mentor is like being the lighthouse for the ships. You are there for them, you encourage them, and you help them along the way. A mentor has to work at it and take it seriously. If you are not there for the attorneys that you mentor, they will wander away like the ship that cannot see the lighthouse. You have to be available, accessible, and a beacon of encouragement. ^TBJ

Headshot of Randy Turner KAREN BENNETT is the managing principal of Germer. The firm has offices in Beaumont, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Tyler. She has been a practicing attorney in Texas for more than 30 years.