60-Minute Mentoring for Lawyers and Law Students


Book Description

A Perfect Resource for Both Mentees and Mentors You can call it "speed mentoring" or "60-minute" mentoring. Just keep this in mind: Momentous things can happen in a moment and episodic mentoring sessions create such moments. In 60-Minute Mentoring for Lawyers and Law Students, a timely and readable guide, you will learn how to use 60-minute mentoring--with its focus on professionalism and life-long learning--to be a better lawyer and colleague. Small Commitments, Big Results Amy Timmer, Associate Dean of Students and Professionalism at WMU-Cooley Law School, and attorney Matthew Cristiano describe how lawyers, law firms, law students and bar associations can successfully use 60-minute mentoring in place of (or alongside) traditional matched-pair mentoring programs. Packed with sample questions, anecdotes and checklists, the book's four parts and 19 chapters explain everything mentors and mentees need to know about episodic mentoring, including: Questions young lawyers and law students should ask How to find, plan for and maximize mentoring sessions Mentee personality types What a 60-minute mentoring session looks like Episodic mentoring for bar association member development, new member orientation, and attorney development Partnering with law schools Why teaching professionalism matters In the past six years, more states have looked to mentoring to ease the introduction of new lawyers into the practice of law. At the same time, many affinity, local, and specialty bar associations have looked for ways to recruit and integrate new members into their existing membership using mentoring. The advantages are obvious: new attorneys need mentors not just to help them with legal issues, but to build a referral network, to become engaged with the legal community, to experience the values and customs of the local bar, to be exposed to continuing legal education and pro bono opportunities ... and on and on. The book is divided into 19 chapters: Chapter 1: What Is Mentoring? Chapter 2: Types of Mentoring Chapter 3: Understanding Episodic Mentoring Chapter 4: Perspectives on Diversity in Episodic Mentoring Chapter 5: The Focus on Ethics and Professionalism: The Common Bond Chapter 6: Find, Plan for, and Maximize Mentoring Episodes Chapter 7: Mentee Personality Types Chapter 8: The Episodic Mentoring Session Chapter 9: Feedback from the Episodic Mentoring Study Chapter 10: When Mentoring Goes Bad Chapter 11: Keeping in Touch with Mentors Chapter 12: How to Become a Mentor Chapter 13: Mentor Personalities and Approaches Chapter 14: A Template for Professionalism Mentoring Chapter 15: What Mentees Bring to the Relationship Chapter 16: Episodic Mentoring for Membership Development Chapter 17: Episodic Mentoring for New Members Chapter 18: Episodic Mentoring for Attorney Development Chapter 19: Partnering with a Local Law School







The Law Student's Pocket Mentor


Book Description

As the ideal companion for law students, The Law Student's Pocket Mentor: From Surviving to Thriving guides students from the summer before starting law school straight through to their first clerking experience. It is a practical, step-by-step guide that uses exercises, worksheets, and checklists to help students identify their needs, plan strategies, and organize their efforts to maximize success in law school. This pocket companion offers all of the essentials students need for success: It is comprehensive in coverage: covers essential academic skills (e.g., reading and briefing cases, taking notes in class, outlining, writing exams) provides career preparation skills (e.g., building strong resumes, choosing classes) discusses emotional aspects of legal education (e.g., maintaining balance, dealing with grades) addresses special concerns of non-traditional students It is accessible in nature: approaches academic topics in a user-friendly, non-academic style gives a student-eye-view of typical challenges faced by law students, including letters from actual students, narratives, etc. presents skills in a logical, step-by-step manner accounts for and addresses various learning styles provides clear, how-to instructions regarding essential academic skills offers exercises to help students identify challenges, plan strategies, and recognize progress provides ample forms to show students how to best organize their time, brief cases, take class notes, and perform self-diagnoses on their exam answers It has been proven effective: all exercises, techniques, and forms have been student-tested and refined at William Mitchell College of Law An author website to support classroom instruction using this title is available at http://www.aspenlawschool.com/iijima




Mentoring Lawyers


Book Description

If you are a skilled legal professional, you know incivility within the profession has reached epidemic proportions. James H. Fierberg spent almost forty years practicing law at the highest levels, and he suggests the profession can solve the problem by paying attention to something it has mostly ignored: mentoring lawyers. In fact, he argues that mentoring programs can help to elevate save the profession and also remove some of the world’s rampant toxicity. He answers questions such as: • How can firms urge an early and comprehensive mindful moral inventory of new attorneys? • What can firms do to help lawyers cultivate positive interpersonal skills and progress in the legal profession? • What can senior lawyers do to nurture a legacy for themselves, their firms, and their brands? Mindful mentors must not only commit to teaching mentees—they must encourage them to come to terms with exactly who they are, how they got to this point, and how they will establish themselves in the community of law moving forward.




Mentor Program


Book Description







Raising the Bar


Book Description

"The effective mentoring of new associates used to be a natural part of the process for law firms, but nowadays economic pressures are inhibiting the practice; personal mentoring is being eliminated by the fiscal restraints of higher starting salaries and client insistence on fewer lawyers, and hands-on experience is hard to come by. Raising the Bar: The Mentor Guidebook for New Lawyers directly addresses this problem by creating one compact guide to relay the information necessary for success as a lawyer. This practical guidebook offers information, examples and anecdotal stories similar to the mentoring experience young lawyers used to enjoy in person. With its useful "takeaway tips" at the end of every chapter, Raising the Bar will help law students and new lawyers face the hidden challenges of practicing law. Beginning with career planning and the transition out of law school, the book's 13 chapters cover topics ranging from mastering basic skills and dealing with clients to establishing trust and staying sane. It tackles delicate issues like fixing mistakes and surviving office politics. Finally, it closes with a discussion of other paths for those who decide to apply their legal education outside law practice. Written for new lawyers, law students, law firms and law schools, Raising the Bar offers, in a single book, what hours of close contact with experienced colleagues would provide a new lawyer when making the difficult transition from school to office"--







Model Rules of Professional Conduct


Book Description

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.




Introduction to Law Firm Practice


Book Description

For both the law student and young lawyer, this guide provides an introduction to the basics of working in a law firm. It discusses how a lawyer can get around within the firm to succeed in law firm practice.