Description
- Strategies for Mentorship in Law: Harrison discusses the challenges of finding mentorship for attorneys and recommends effective strategies for seeking mentorship.
- Importance of Mentors: Highlighting the significance of mentors in a legal career, citing a case where lacking mentorship affected someone's partnership prospects.
- Finding a Mentor: Tips include reaching out to professionals in your desired field, requesting informational interviews, and offering to assist or volunteer to gain experience.
- Networking and Connections: Emphasizes the importance of networking through bar associations, seeking mentorship programs, and connecting with like-minded individuals for better career prospects.
- Effective Marketing in Law: Contrasts ineffective methods like applying solely to job openings with effective strategies such as personalized outreach and finding a demand in the market
Transcript:
Can I face the challenges of finding mentorship? I might want to share your strategies for attorneys seeking mentorship and how such mentorships can contribute to long-term career success. Okay. To mentor you, you have to find someone you can work with that will do that for you.
So it would help if you had a mentor, which is very important. How important are mentors? I remember talking to this guy who didn't make a partner at this law firm or left before he could be considered to be partnered and went and started his firm. And I asked him why he didn't think you would make partners.
I had no mentors or people I thought would have my back when the time came. So that's interesting. He didn't have someone to support him. So, everyone having a mentor is incredibly important. Frankly, when I went to law school, I went to college, and I had mentors who helped me go to the schools I wanted.
So, getting a mentor can be accommodating, but you want to get one in your practice here. So all you do is find people who do the work, and you explain to them how much you want to do it and contact them. So if I wanted to, and again, I hate returning to this, but this is ridiculous.
So, I wanted to be a real estate attorney in Tallahassee, right? So here's a law firm, Ray Robinson; let's see the website. And then, I need to find out who these people are, if there's even a directory of these attorneys. I need help understanding what's going on. Oh, attorneys, okay. Look at all these people here.
There's Lucia, and there's a senior associate. Are there, oh, she's a shareholder. I might go and message her and say, Hi Valerie, I would; I'm very interested in this; she does food law, which is very interesting. I'm very interested in food law. Could I come in? From what I understand, you may yet have any openings.
Could I come in for an informational interview, my one thing, or could I, would you, I'm very interested in, would it be possible to come in and watch and volunteer to work or for very little money for you, or there's something like that if you were new, but that's how you did it. Now, this is just one attorney in Tallahassee.
There are tons of people that you can do that. So if you reach out to people for help or say, I'm wondering if you could help me and point me in the right direction, which is, do you know of any ways I can look to Try to get experience doing this, that and that, that's how you would do it. You will go to if there are any groups or bar associations related to it or that sort of thing.
Sometimes, like in California, they have mentors in different practice areas. It can help new attorneys only sometimes, but sometimes they do. So that's what I would do. But to get a mentor, you must have something to offer them. You have to tell them, can I help? Cause, can I? Whatever it is you want to do, you have to be able to find people that way.
And people, if you just say, hey, I want to work for you, that can work. You can call someone and say, I'm calling you about this. I'd like to work with you. Or you could message them and say, I'm trying to get A good experience in this area of law. Would it be possible for me to come in and ask you a few questions and do an informational interview?
People like that, by the way; people feel flattered when someone else wants to do the same kind of work that they do. So that's another example. That's something that only some people do, but again, that goes back to effective marketing versus ineffective. It is so ineffective when you apply to all these places.
You're only applying to job openings. You're marketing yourself in areas that have a limited amount of demand. So, you are just and effective in doing this. And also, I would say connecting with individuals and individuals doing what you want.
So all that can be much more if you have connections, and that sort of thing is much more critical. And then finding a hungry market, and not a market, not a, not one that is stuff people like, all right, so I hope that helps. That's a long-winded way of saying. You have to find; you have to go someplace where, again, I would also say you have to go to a market where there are people like you; you have to try to do things that way, too.
