Earlier this month, the Colorado Women's Bar Association (CWBA) kicked off its revitalized mentoring program with a "speed networking" event at which Jessica Brown, past CWBA president and former NCWBA board member, set the tone with the (abridged) remarks set forth below:
Not everyone has had the experience of having a mentor. I have always felt extremely lucky to have had several and to have this opportunity to honor them.
Mentoring is really valuable, especially (and this may be a little bit controversial) for women. I
actually think mentoring is equally important for men and women in terms of personal career advancement. But can we agree that: (1) there is still a lot of room for improvement for women in the workplace (and here I'll just briefly mention the #MeToo movement and implicit bias) and (2) for things to really change for women at work, we need more women in leadership positions? I
t's not easy, however, for women to ascend to (and maintain) leadership positions in our still-male-dominated profession without mentors.
Again, the same may be true for men: When I look at the women and men who have made partner in my office, every single one of us has had at least one mentor whom I can specifically identify.
And not just a mentor, but a "sponsor": a mentor with sufficient political capital and power to stand up and support their mentee for that very big promotion from, for example, associate or Of Counsel to partner; or Associate GC to General Counsel; someone who is willing to put their own reputation on the line and say this person, my mentee, should be the Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Justice Department - he or she can be successful in that position.
Making partner wasn't always my goal (in law school I wanted to be a law professor, when I clerked I wanted to be a judge); but I wanted to keep it open as an option. So as an associate I worked really hard to impress each new senior lawyer I worked for - and to grow significantly as a lawyer every year - to be able to point to new skills I had developed and to always be a little bit outside my comfort zone.
It was my mentors who helped make me feel comfortable taking those risks. I distinctly remember Larry Treece, who was not a partner but became one later at another firm, sitting me down to talk with me about how to depose an expert and pushing me to create a litigation budget and estimate how many hours it should take me to write a summary judgment motion.
I remember Dennis Gladwell, a senior employment lawyer in our Orange County office, not just letting me participate as he prepared company executives for their depositions but teaching me the art of witness preparation. Dennis also introduced me to his Labor & Employment partners in our other offices, and soon I was working for a lot of them.
That included Dave Cathcart in our LA office, who, when I was a more senior associate, not only gave me equal billing on an in-depth paper we wrote on fee-shifting under the federal civil rights statutes, but also let me co-present it with him at the prestigious American Employment Law Council conference and made a point of introducing me to the many senior lawyers he knew there.
And finally, there was Bill Kilberg in our DC office who had been Solicitor of Labor before he rejoined the firm and argued a Supreme Court case I assisted with regarding the ADA, moving my admission into the Supreme Court Bar so I had a front-row seat at the oral argument.
There is no doubt I was very lucky to encounter such generous senior lawyers during my formative years as an attorney. And, by the way, they all were older, white men -
so that's just a note to say your mentors do not need to look like you. And yes, I was very lucky they invested in me. But it's also the case that my relationships with each of them were very much a two-way street. I worked really hard to make them look good; to make their lives easier; to take ownership of their clients' problems; to stay awake working or worrying so they could get a little more sleep.
That said, I was also lucky to be in a work environment where my colleagues could help me with skills development, career advice, important introductions, and the like. I was talking with my sister-in-law in Florida over the holidays: She's never had a real mentor in any of her jobs because she was always either the only lawyer in her department or, later, the senior-most lawyer in her department - the one who was supposed to have all the answers. But she mentioned that she knows the Florida Bar has a mentoring program, and she said she probably should have participated. The reason she hadn't, she said, was that it felt weak to ask for help.
My initial reaction was - that's crazy, getting help isn't weak, it's smart. But I do know the pressure that exists in this profession to seem like you've got it all figured out. That's especially true once we reach a certain level, and I will tell you that, as a partner at an international law firm for 17 years now, I do not have it all figured out.
And, unfortunately, after I made partner, my mentors disappeared. Larry changed firms as I mentioned; Dennis and later
Bill retired; and Dave, very sadly, passed away. I wished I still had mentors at the firm, especially in my junior partner years. I didn't, but what I did have were great examples of mentors, gratitude for where I was in my career, and a desire to pay it forward.
This led me to start focusing more intentionally on mentoring associates within the firm and also to get more involved in our legal community. I took on a big pro bono matter for Legal Momentum and worked on it with one of my associate mentees who is now a shareholder at Littler; I got more involved as a partner in the Colorado and Denver Bar Associations and chaired the Barrister's Ball fundraiser two years in a row; I joined the board of the Legal Aid Foundation and ultimately became Chair; and I finally joined the CWBA - specifically the Professional Advancement Committee because of its emphasis on mentoring.
All of that activity was extremely rewarding - maybe especially because I got to know a couple of people through these experiences who
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I consider to be my "leadership mentors," former CBA President Patricia Jarzobski and Colorado Attorney General, then Dean of CU Law School, Phil Weiser.
So one benefit I've found of mentoring others has been finding mentors in a new context, outside my firm. Another benefit is the opportunity to learn from my mentees. In fact, Attorney General Weiser recently quoted someone as saying, "I've learned from my teachers; I've learned from my peers; but most of all I've learned from my students." Just a few months ago I spoke on the topic, "Private Interest Law, Public Interest Heart," and I connected with a student who initiated a postcarding campaign so that students could write letters to Dr. Blasey-Ford expressing their support and sharing their own stories. The event was cosponsored by four different student clubs and the CWBA. More than 100 students participated.
Students are doing amazing things.
Another benefit of mentoring is that people you help are often eager to return the favor. My mentees have helped me land work by introducing me to their contacts. Relationships are an obvious and direct benefit of mentoring.
And of course there is the intrinsic reward of seeing your mentee succeed; and that can be within your workplace as well as outside of it. Although I, and I think most mentors, generally devote their not-unlimited mentoring time to people with high potential, strong work ethics, and great attitudes. I've also had some really rewarding outcomes with associates who were struggling.
My favorite story relates to an associate from LA who wasn't particularly detail oriented and we were working on a matter where detail orientation was critical. She was smart and had a lot of energy and enthusiasm - it just seemed like our workplace might not be the best fit for her. We had a number of candid conversations about her strengths and ambitions. Fast forward to about six years later - after going in house and developing an international compliance program for her employer, she had formed her own compliance firm, she was competing with the big accounting firms for work and awards, she had written a book and gotten great press for it through a contact she had made at the Wall Street Journal, she had a blog and had done a podcast on how to build a successful compliance career, she was being asked to speak as a keynote about compliance issues in Europe, and she was very happy!
As you may have noticed, almost all of the mentoring I've been describing so far has been informal mentoring. We do also have a formal mentoring program at my firm. I have three associate mentees currently - and we get together once a month for lunch to discuss various topics like how to thrive in our firm's free market system. We've maintained the same group for a while now and the idea is that they can mentor each other, too - not all the mentoring comes from me or top down; rather it's a circle.
I will say candidly that, in my view, informal mentoring and sponsorship tend to be more valuable than formal mentoring when it comes to career advancement in particular. But I absolutely believe that formal mentoring - like the CWBA's revamped mentoring program - can play an important and valuable role.
First, in part due to an implicit bias known as affinity bias (whereby people subconsciously tend to gravitate toward people who look like them or remind them of themselves), not everyone is able to attract an informal mentor. That's true even in large workplaces. Formal mentoring programs can help fill that gap. And for people who work in smaller workplaces - a company with a very small legal department for instance like my sister-in-law's work environments, or a solo practitioner - a formal mentor may be the only option.
Second, it can be helpful to talk with someone you don't work for all the time. You might be able to ask questions you aren't comfortable asking an informal mentor, like how to find a position outside your current workplace; or maybe how to do something you think you already should know how to do. An informal mentor is going to be reviewing your work - a formal mentor may be helpfully removed from the review process, which potentially can allow for greater candor and vulnerability.
Third, by participating in a formal mentoring program, you expand your network and relationships. At a minimum, you get to know your mentor or mentee. But it doesn't have to stop there. This summer I had a few formal and informal mentees attend a backyard dinner party that Justice Melissa Hart, CBA President Patty Jarzobski, District Court Judge Emily Anderson, our new Solicitor General Eric Olson, and other amazing members of our legal community also attended.
So in summary, I encourage you to get involved as a mentor, mentee, or BOTH - because:
- We need more women in leadership, which will benefit all women at work;
- It's hard to attain and maintain a leadership position without mentors;
- It's NOT a weakness to ask for help;
- Mentoring is valuable at all stages of your career;
- Mentoring has value for both the mentor and the mentee; and
- Formal mentoring programs fulfill an important function and can indeed be very valuable.
Participants at the CWBA event then had the opportunity to network with one another and "rock star" mentors as shown below. For more details on the CWBA's mentoring program, please feel free to contact Executive Director Kim Sporrer.
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