Getting the most out of mentoring

What is mentoring?

Over the last decade, the language we use to describe people who play a role in supporting us at work has become more varied than ever before. We can turn to people leaders, HR, mentors, allies, sponsors, coaches etc. All play different and unique roles which can be of particular value at different points on a career journey. A mentor can provide support in a particular phase, or support you when you are facing an important decision or turning point
in your career.

The unique feature of mentoring is that the mentee does not report to the mentor in the same way as a line manager. The mentee is encouraged to take ownership of their development and, while the mentor acts as a “sounding board”, the focus is on the mentee self-managing their development. This can lead to greater fulfilment and sustained progress for the mentee. 

A key feature is that the relationship is based on trust and confidentiality. Ideas can be explored and the mentor can offer an objective insight that cannot always be found in other relationships.

The Society runs two mentoring schemes for its members – the Career Development Mentoring Scheme and the Student: Trainee Mentoring Scheme. Both of us have participated in the Career Development Mentoring Scheme – Sarah Jackman as a mentor and Amy Gordon as a mentee. The scheme is open to anyone aiming to advance their professional career, including students and graduates, trainees, accredited paralegals and solicitors at any level of their career. The Society welcomes volunteer mentors to participate in its programmes and provides initial training to enhance understanding of the role of a mentor. See the website or contact mentoring@lawscot.org.uk.

The role of a mentor

Sarah Jackman comments: “I thought I had a fairly clear idea of what type of role a mentor was expected to play, but what really came home to me through the training was the skills involved in supporting your mentee to reach their own decisions. So often, it is easy to provide advice in a way that is directed, but the skill in being a mentor is to listen and reflect on learnings from your own experience, as this allows you to ask the right questions to support the mentee in coming up with their own potential next steps.”

Finding a mentor

The Society operates an online mentoring platform that allows mentees to find their “match”. There are significant similarities with dating apps or websites! The mentee can seek out a mentor with a similar skillset, background or interests. Ultimately, both mentee and mentor need to agree that they can work together. The idea is that the mentoring relationship lasts for about a calendar year, but this will vary.

The benefits of mentoring

The mentee’s perspective (Amy): “What attracted me to mentoring was the opportunity to connect with someone who had different knowledge and expertise from anyone else in my network. I found it really helpful to have accountability towards my mentor, knowing that we were meeting up again, to have spent the time between meetings considering the various points we had discussed. This helped me move forward in making decisions about the next steps in my career.”

The mentor’s perspective (Sarah): “At the time when I signed up to be a mentor, I envisaged being matched with a junior lawyer based in Glasgow so that I could nip out from the office to meet up for a coffee from time to time and we could catch up. As things turned out, when I accepted my first match in 2020, the mentoring relationship turned out to be fully virtual, like so much of life at that time. This actually had a real benefit in that it was much easier to build in catch-ups around work, but had the downside that we did not meet in person until after the mentoring relationship had ended. It is a real privilege to hear from someone about their ambitions, concerns and uncertainties about which direction to follow. I really enjoy getting to know people in that context and find it very rewarding to see them making progress.”    

DIY informal mentoring

Many organisations set up internal mentoring schemes, with varying degrees of structure or formality.

Sarah: “Earlier in my career when I worked in financial services, there was the opportunity to request a mentor from outside the Legal & Governance team, and this provided an opportunity to receive an objective view and advice from someone with a different career background. 

“Recently, in the People, Reward & Mobility team at Dentons, senior members of the team have offered to perform the role of mentor for more junior members. We have also put in place peer-to-peer mentoring to support team members who join us, or who are returning after a period of being away from work. For some, this has provided a valuable opportunity to discuss career plans, or any challenges they are facing settling into a new routine. It also simply gives team members a nominated person to turn to when they are looking for advice. 

“Mentoring is voluntary and is led by the needs of the individuals. This is what gives it such potential to be really helpful.”

Explore your options

If you are interested in taking part in mentoring, there are many opportunities in different forms, available at all stages or phases of careers. We would encourage members to explore options in their own workplace, and outside, as a way of broadening the experience of work. 

Mentoring can also help to widen access to the profession. The Lawscot Foundation provides mentors to the students that it supports. The Foundation sees mentoring as a key element of achieving its aim of supporting its students to develop their skills and confidence.

Dentons has run mentoring programmes for university students since 2018. This year, it introduced a new programme for first year students, with a focus on social mobility.

The scheme was designed for students from socio-economic backgrounds that are typically underrepresented in law. Mentors sought to provide insight into a career in law, build the students’ confidence and help them develop skills that would stand them in good stead for a career in law. Alongside individual sessions with a mentor, the firm’s graduate recruitment team ran a series of workshops for the students, to help them build commercial awareness, develop their “personal brands” and provide support with summer placement applications. 

Laura Morrison, a practice development lawyer who signed up for the scheme, enjoyed the opportunity to support a student who had no previous knowledge of the legal sector. “It was rewarding to help a student who had no experience of the legal sector prior to studying law, much as I had no idea what the law involved when I embarked on my degree. It was interesting to reflect on my own career path and share some of the lessons I have learned along the way. If more of us can help to demystify the profession for students who don’t have family or other connections to it, hopefully we can help students to realise that a career in law is achievable, no matter what your background.”

There are a number of other ways of getting involved with mentoring, if you do not want to set up your own programme. Dentons supports MCR Pathways, a charity set up by Dr Iain MacRitchie in 2007 to help improve the post-education outcomes of care-experienced young people. The charity also supports young people who are carers, asylum seekers or who have suffered significant family bereavement or disruption at home. 

MCR Pathways carefully matches mentors and mentees, who work together over the course of a school year, normally around S3 or S4. Mentors help their mentees to identify their talents and build their confidence to help them progress to a positive post-school destination. Prior to the introduction of mentoring, research showed that only 59.8% of care-experienced young people progressed to full time employment, college or university; 81.6% of MCR Pathways’ mentored young people do so. 

A number of Dentons’ staff signed up as mentors with MCR, including Rachel Gibb, an associate in the Corporate team. “I look forward to my meetings with my mentee each week,” she says, “and, while not every session is easy, I feel like I am making a positive impact. I work hard to encourage her in her endeavours at school, to help her build confidence in herself, and ultimately be an ear to anything she would like to talk about. 

“With the work that I am involved in as a corporate associate, it can sometimes be challenging to make the weekly meetings. The flexibility afforded by Dentons since getting involved with MCR has been tremendous and it has allowed me to ensure I can always meet my commitments to my mentee, without compromising on work output. 

“Sometimes when work feels stressful, I find that can be the perfect time to take one hour away to speak to my mentee and return to my to-do list with a fresh perspective.

“The work of MCR Pathways makes an active difference to the lives of young people in our community here in Glasgow and I am proud to promote their work wherever I am able to. Overall, I find volunteering with them to be a very rewarding experience and would recommend it to anyone.”