Have you thought about becoming a mentor or mentee?

Are you enthusiastic, passionate and have a desire to make a difference and help people? Why not consider becoming a mentor in 2019 and share your experience, skills and knowledge to encourage and support a mentee.

We have launched an online version of their already popular career mentoring scheme with the aim to support even more solicitors and students with career development. Since its introduction in 2014, 150 mentees have successfully been matched with a mentor through the previous scheme. Mentees who took part achieved both career and personal development goals they set out, while mentors felt the value of being a role model and gained valuable skills.

Rachel Shaw from RBS, who has previously been a mentee on the scheme, said, “I signed up for the career mentoring scheme early on in my traineeship. I was paired with a partner from a private practice firm and found it really beneficial chatting to her about the profession and hearing about her experiences. My mentor was very approachable and we got on well - I'm really glad I signed up for it."

Olivia Parker, our careers development officer added, “Our new mentoring platform works a little like online dating, but without the swiping(!) and profiles will be anonymised. This will put the decision-making into the mentor and mentees’ hands, rather than relying on our team to manually match mentoring couples together. Mentors and mentees will both create their own profiles, then be able to find the best match for themselves.

“There’s no hard and fast rule for what makes a good mentor and you don’t need to be at a certain stage of your career. You just need to be keen to learn the skills to be an effective mentor and commit to the scheme and your mentee when the time comes. Similarly, there’s no ‘typical’ mentee. You’ll know if you have a specific goal in relation to your career and as long as you have an idea of what your ideal end-result might look like, a mentor can likely help.”

Learn how you can benefit from both sides of mentoring, either as a mentor or a mentee by attending a short information session on Tuesday 22 January 6-7pm at the our offices in Edinburgh. Please register your interest to attend by emailing oliviaparker@lawscot.org.uk.

Find out more about becoming a mentee or mentor.