What is mentorship?

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Bar Review, a space where we talk honestly about life and the legal profession. I'm Carrie, and I'm Anika. Welcome to the conversation. Just a quick note before we get started, we are not your lawyers, and this is not legal advice. - And to the extent either of us are employed by the time this airs, this is where we share our personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else, especially those kind enough to employ us. - And one more time for the people in the back. - We are not your lawyers. - This is not legal advice. - Thank you for listening. - What do you think makes a great mentor? - I think a great mentor has to be someone you just are a friend with. I think mentors have to be friends because I think for a mentorship relationship to be truly useful to you, you have to have a level of comfort with the other person that lets you have honest, real conversations. So I think it has to be someone you genuinely like, someone that you respect, someone that you build a friendship with so that you are able to have those real conversations with that person and ask those hard questions. But I guess that there are different types of mentors. And so that might not be applicable to all types of mentors, but I think the most valuable relationship and of which you need at least one is that mentor that's also a friend. - I think a mentor is a person who talks about you when you're not in the room, the same way that they talk about you when you're in the room. - Yeah. - Because I have very often been in rooms with people that are talking about other people in ways that I don't think they would talk about them if they were in the room. And I don't mean that always in a negative way. Like I, actually, like this is kind of funny. I don't know why this is coming to mind, but my parents have been married since they were small children. It's pretty incredible how long that they've been together. And my dad will say then nicest things about my mom when my mom is not around and then is unrelentingly teasing to her when she is. My mom will often say things within their bicker like, "Oh, I didn't know you liked me, but I get it." Because I wouldn't know he liked you either unless you left the room. (laughing) But wouldn't it be nice if you said that to you too? - Maybe what you're more getting out is that we often are more critical of the people that we're close to than praising to them or to their face maybe more praising than critical. - Yeah, in moments where people might need a reality. I mean, how many times have you been like, "Hey, Carrie, maybe don't burn that building down." That's maybe not a great idea. - Well, that's actually very real, I think, in our profession is I think younger attorneys could really benefit sometimes from really honest conversations about their work or the way they're approaching things or what they're doing. And I don't think telling someone, "Hey, you're not really doing this right is unkind when they're not ever taught how to do it." So that's part of the big issue. You go to law school, you don't really learn how to be a lawyer and you don't even really learn how to write like a lawyer, which in theory is the one thing law school is supposed to teach you to do. And then you get into practice and you're just doing your best based on what you've cobbled together from watching other imperfect people do this job. And then maybe you go about something imperfectly and instead of a partner or a supervisor coming to you to have an honest conversation about, "Hey, this is the way I would like to see this work because those can be personal preferences." Or, "Hey, this is how we approach this task in this profession." Conversations, they just redo all of your work once they get it are annoyed about that. And then you stop sending you work and then you never get the opportunity to progress because I'm sure that that singular partner isn't the only one that's had that thought about your work product. And so you're never getting the honesty that will allow you to improve. There's a few things in here that we should break down. One is perfectionism on both sides of that equation. So there's something about being that person who receives the work product and knowing that there's something not quite up to standard about it, but not wanting to be that dick that tells somebody there's something not quite up to standard because somebody has either never shown you had or has told you that saying something makes you a dick instead of clear as kind and teaching as kindness. But the perfectionism, they're shaming it, right? If I tell somebody that they're not perfect, I think in this profession, there's that immediate internal attack versus, no, you're not perfect. I'm not perfect. Also, what we're doing together is not perfect, but we can make each other better. And I care enough to make you better. And I care enough to say this thing out loud that might be hard to hear and might be hard to hear for dumb reasons that we should probably work through together too. And you're safe. You don't get fired at the end of this. You don't not get your bonus at the end of this. You don't not get my friendship or my support or future work. There's no penalty here for me telling you, I had a different expectation. But the other side of that is still perfectionism because it should never be a one-sided conversation. Even though this is a super higher article profession, how about more experienced lawyers should learn how to give feedback or learn how to have kind conversations or learn how to manage? Or learn that maybe the way that they're doing it isn't really working. If I give instruction to somebody about what my expectations are and those expectations are not met, it is not on one person. It is on two people in the conversational dynamic. One didn't explain it right. You didn't nail your goal of telling somebody what you wanted so that, I don't know, inputs and outputs, right? I think another side to, I was gonna say the perfectionist coin, but really it's a perfectionist box because there's a lot going on here. Is the idea that there's not one right way to do it, either? I'm teaching this semester at the University of Minnesota Law School. And one of the things that I've told my students that are one-os is that I don't believe there's any right way to lawyer. I do think there are wrong ways, but the point of this course is to help you find your voice. And so unless you're doing something technically or ethically incorrect, I don't consider you to be doing it wrong. And because I don't think there's a right way to do this, you have to find your own voice to something. And I think that's unique in a law school context. Everyone looked at me with wide eyes when I said there's no right answer to this class. We're going to have conversations about ways to do this, but I'm not gonna tell you the right way to do this. I think that's different from the structure of every other course in law school and how that trains lawyers to think. Then I think you get into the profession and there's someone supervising you who has just done something one way forever. And this is the way they want to do it. This is the way they like their voice. And so when an associate approaches it a different way in a different voice, that's suddenly incorrect. When I don't think that's the truth, there has to be a mindset to editing and to receiving work product that is I'm going to let someone who's working for me, who's doing this work for me, have their own voice. - With me. - Yeah. - Working with me. - I think so in an ideal world, I think it is working with. I think in the reality of this profession though, it's working for because you get an assignment, you do that assignment, you send it off and then they do whatever with it. And so I think there has to be some acceptance that someone is doing work for you. And so that work is going to be in their voice and you're going to have to adapt to someone else's voice in some way and just because it's a different voice doesn't mean it's incorrect. Or there needs to be enough conversation that this isn't about you finding your voice. This is about you being my ghost writer. And if you're going to have someone ghost right, here's five samples of my voice that you can read. And so when you do this project, you can try to mimic that voice. That's where I think it gets unkind is when someone is expecting you to write their way and ghost right for them fully and then gives you no resources to guide that ghost right. And then you're just kind of supposed to pick it up through red lines and revisions over time. That's not kind. Well, and also a lot of times you don't get revisions and red lines. You just get people pissed off in their office alone talking shit and then when you're like, hey, can I sit down and get feedback? They're like, yeah, yeah, you did an excellent, awesome job except I spent like three hours cursing you out under my breath. So who does that serve? Yeah. And when I joined my current law firm, I was working for an attorney that I really respected as a part of the reason I wanted to be there and one of my first assignments for a case that he was running. We were in the drafting. We were on a deadline. He did red line the document, had revisions, filed it. Everything's on its merry way. I'm assuming I'm never going to speak about that assignment. with him ever again because we've now filed it and the door is closed. And we can a half later, we both happened to be in the office and he came in and just said, "Hey, I wanted to talk to you about the way you approach that assignment." Nothing was technically wrong, but this is how I think about these things and this is how I would like to see them written in the future. And so I just wanted to have that conversation with you so you know going forward. That's what I like to have. And that was an incredible conversation and also the first of its kind in my early years of practice, that's the clearest kind. It's like, "Hey, like your work was fine and you did what I asked you to do, but this is how I want to think about it going forward." And I care enough to take the time to talk to you about it. And I took the time to talk to me about it in person rather than sending me an email that could come off in a weird tone or just sending me red lines and saying, "Review these red lines for the future," something like that. It was a, "Hey, I'm going to come in, have a mentorship moment with you as a younger attorney." And then ended it being like, "We're so happy to have you, really great to have you on these teams looking forward to working with you." So sure there was critique and there was feedback, but it was an incredibly positive conversation on the whole. I love it. So this is supposed to be a trade profession. Just like the blacksmiths had the apprentice and you come up under another person. This needs to be a teaching profession. Why do you think people don't take the time to teach? I have two main responses to this. I've thought about them quite a lot. The first prong is the billable hour, which I think is the root of all evils, which is that mentorship time like that isn't billable. The client isn't going to pay this partner's rate to have them spend half an hour teaching and associate how to do something. And that's truly what we're talking. The universe, I think, would make a difference. Is this half an hour every quarter, but a client isn't going to pay for that. Unless the firm actively takes a stance that they'll give credit for that type of work or they value that type of work in some other way, you are disincentivized by the billable hour to spend any time doing that. And so it's an economic equation. And in the long run of the economics that makes no sense because if you spend an hour teaching someone how to do something and you teach them how to do it more efficiently, you teach them how to do it the way you like to see it. So there's less of your editing time. On the whole, you're going to save a client a lot more money and time correcting work in the future. So it's almost conflating billable time with valuable time. Correct. Because time is only valuable if it's billed. I think is the mindset. So how much value is lost just with that mindset alone? So much value. And tied up in the bill hour is that everyone is busy. Everyone is trying to bill eight hours every single day. And there are too many deadlines stacked on each other. There are too many cases. People are struggling at the same time. I'm making a concerted effort in my practice to not run deadline to deadline. And I still feel like I run deadline to deadline because that's just the busyness that a billable hour culture requires of you. Because you always have to have work to turn to so that you're always able to hit these metrics. And that's how you show your vote. Literally you are told your value here is your ability to turn out work in hours to I think is ego. Hell, fucking yes. And I think that those are intertwined. There's this idea that I know what I'm doing. I know how to do it. I want to be the voice to the client. I want all of this to be in my voice. And I don't want my brand so to speak or whatever compromised by having to adapt to your working style or your voice or incorporating your presence into this. I want my skill set so to speak, my viewpoint, my voice, my face to be running this show. And so taking an hour to teach someone and mentor them and bring them up so that they're doing work of the same quality as mine doesn't serve that ego. And so I think that's the two pronged about why we're not a teaching profession. I'm going to replace your word ego with insecurity. Yeah. Because people that are truly confident and the best mentors that I've had don't have ego. They're like, yeah, sure, come on up. Plenty of room, plenty of work. I don't want to do this. You can do that. This work gets done better. And we have more fun if we both pick up a broom. We can get this done better. We can have more fun doing it. So what I'm hearing is that mentorship is super fucking radical actually. Choosing to be a mentor is to find value in something that the machine so to speak has dubbed not too necessarily have value. Yeah. I value mentorship. I think mentorship is very important. And so I've also made conscious decisions to put myself in positions where I'm mentoring younger or up and coming whatever younger to me in the profession attorneys. And those things are not valued hours in my billable hour metrics. So when I decided I wanted to teach, I'm taking on those teaching hours as work in addition to any billable hour expectation or requirement of my law firm. And it has value in a marketing and in a presence. And just it's intrinsic value as building relationships with human beings. But because it doesn't have the economic on paper value of a billable hour, which is a fallacy. It's that immediate return. Yes. Right versus the long term return. Because when you teach, you are making the profession stronger when you teach. Also, I will just say bluntly as somebody who tutored and taught, I learned something better once I taught it. I'm teaching class on discovery and I learned something yesterday. The students ask questions and think about this in a way that isn't cynical. And they haven't been beaten into a viewpoint by their superiors and they haven't been trained in some wrote method of which we approach this. So we'll tell them about a rule or the way something should be done and then the last questions. It's really fascinating because they're thinking about it in a really refreshing way. Maybe mentorship is helping someone find their voice, truly find their voice. Yeah, I think that's what mentorship is. Lawyering is a team sport. And we're trained, like it's a solo profession and law school makes you think that it's a solo profession. But it is such a team sport among attorneys, among staff and the personal relationships, which do end up, I think, becoming the mentorship relationships. You build that trust and you build familiarity that helps you build a certain trust with others on your team that when I hand this off to you, it's going to be done well. And so I don't have to be anxious about it because this profession is anxiety inducing and you have to get the details right and you have to hit deadlines and all of these things matter. But if you're on a team where you trust each other and have communication and can do that handoff, your life gets 8 million times easier. But if you don't invest in the mentorship and the relationship building, you're never going to get that because you have to dedicate time to it. So again, a theme of the episodes we've made. Mentorship is also a fake word. It's just intergenerational friendship. Yeah. And you're either friends or you're not friends. Yes. Correct. Friends comes down to real respect because if I respect you as a human being, I want to know about your weekend. I want to know how your kids are doing. I want to know what plans you have and what restaurant you just went to. I want to know that about you because I respect that you are a whole human that does not exist in this profession as a 2D cutout. And I want to know where you want to go. Yeah. Where you headed, what are your goals? Let me tell you about some goals I had and dropped that maybe I should bring back. This is an ongoing conversation. It's supposed to be fun. And it's supposed to be fun. And how can I make this more fun for you? Am I not communicating in a way that you can understand? What way should I send this email? How do we do this better? And so. Help me help you and also help you help me. Yeah. This is a really important point on this mutuality. There are these, I'm going to call them, manufactured mentor programs where you get assigned people. And it really isn't organic and you try. And by the way, I've also been assigned. I'm currently in a mentorship program because of you actually and an organization that you're very involved with. And it is so organically happening. We are actually working together in a few different capacities. So I'm not saying that all mentorship programs are created equal and that they're all bullshit or anything like that. But why does it not work? I think it's because you have to genuinely be friends. And there's a reason you're not friends with everyone on planet earth. You're predisposed to be friends with certain types of people, certain types of people in certain eras too. Maybe if you had met this mentee five years ago, it would have really clicked. But whatever phase of life you're in right now, it's just not clicking. There just really needs to be that spark. It's kind of like a dating. We need to be able to sit across the table from each other and talk, which is this podcast. But it's also how I've approached when I've been assigned mentees and formal mentor programs. I've said, let's go meet for a glass of wine. Let's go to a happy hour. Try to meet in a way that's casual. The way you would be different. Yeah, the way you would be different, because this relationship is going to be valuable if we're just having the same small talk at a networking happy hour with a drink in our hands. That's not the type of mentor that I want to be for you. I want to be someone who you can have honest conversations with and have that environment with. I just don't think that formalized settings are conducive to creating those relationships. I think that's fair. I also want to say to every first date is awkward. Every first hang is awkward. It doesn't mean it's not organically going to work just because it's a little awkward. Yeah, you and I were a little awkward at first. It was fun, but it was awkward. You knew something was there, but you don't know what it is yet. What I think that's the point you knew something was there. I do think there is a gut check to relations up to my point. I think there are different types of mentors. There can be people that you just casually run into or is a friendly face in a room who can introduce you to other people. Those are mentors too, but just in a different way. I propose to you that that gut check that you're talking about and I'm about to say your favorite word is a safety. There is a actual human evolutionary biological thing that is happening when you sit across from somebody when you're like, I think I can trust you. Yeah. And I don't know. That, to me, is the basis of friendship. So, does this all just come back to being a kind human and giving a fuck about people? I think so. Give a fuck. Yeah. Clear as kind. Be a kind person. Be nice about it. That's another thing that drives me insane sometimes about this profession and the way that it schools you to act. Just because it's the way it's always been done doesn't mean it's the way it should be. Just because somebody was rude and obstructive to you in your first deposition because they saw a baby lawyer and tried to take advantage of that doesn't mean you need to turn around and do the same thing when you're the one more experienced in the room. But you have to stop somewhere and I would like to think that women that care about people and especially other women in this profession would say this ends here. I suffered through that but I'm not going to turn around and do it to somebody else because I think it's wrong. Or if I make a mistake because I'm not perfect and none of us are perfect, I'm going to acknowledge that imperfection and I'm going to try and do better. Yeah. I disagree with one thing you said though. I don't think nice and kind are the same things. That's true because a nice and be superficial kind is something different. I don't think you're ever nice to me but you are the kindest to me. My husband would probably agree though. Never nice to. But I say that as a compliment. I don't say that as a negative thing at all. I don't know if I've told this story on this podcast before but it deserves to be telling if I have. I walked into a kind of bullshit staff meeting at my first big law job and all of the chairs around the table were taken and there were a bunch of empty chairs in the perimeter around the road. Oh yeah. So I sat down in one of the chairs in the perimeter and mid-meeting. Like interrupting clearly somebody in the middle of some kind of conversation. I can't remember if it's somebody talking at the table or somebody talking on the screen. This woman made space for me at the table and very kind but not very nice at all in the best possible way. There is to say that said like basically get the fuck over here. Pull your chair up to this table and at the end of that meeting made a point of it just being one-on-one but she walked back to my office with me and she said you never come into this room and don't make a seat for yourself at this table. Yeah and that is beautiful and I want a thousand more stories of women doing that. And that is not nice. That is not nice. No but it's very kind. Yeah. What the opposite of that is is if you tell somebody that they did a great job and you liked what they did but they didn't do a great job and you didn't like what they did and then you go into your office and you close the door and you talk about either in your head or to other people about how they didn't do a great job and when I say other people a lot of that shows up in reviews. Yeah. And especially in law firm environments where there's that black box review system where you never really cajonace up and like tell somebody how they can be better until it's anonymous feedback. Not to me is not being kind. No that is not. But it is a moment of being nice. And I do for better or for worse believe that people genuinely want to do a good job and I think people genuinely want to be a part of a team that makes your life better. I don't wake up on a random Wednesday. Even when I'm stressed out and overworked and say I'm going to be mean and I'm going to make all of this harder on this person because that's just how I roll that a bet. Even in the worst moments I'm still trying to make this easier on other people and pull my weight. And so if you understand that intent it's really not hard to have a feedback conversation because I would welcome that feedback. Like I want to make this easier and better for you. So if I could do something that makes this easier and better for you, sign me up. And that has value. And then I immediately trust you more. And now I want to do your work. I want to work for you more because you've established that you have enough respect for me and you have a career and me as a human being that the second things happened or the week after when it's appropriate, you're going to walk down to my office, pull up a chair, and say, "Hey, I just wanted a chat about this. I really like working with you and I want this to work." And so I'm going to give you 15 minutes of feedback right now. And then I'm going to keep sending you work and I'm going to write you a great review because you took constructive feedback and you improved. And then I'm going to give you a quick tip. I'm going to give you a quick tip. It comes down to caring. It comes down to respect. If it's true that I didn't do a good job of explaining to you what you should give me as your best, we need to work through it, but two people need to work through that. It's not one sided. - Yeah. - Who is a person that helped you find your voice? - It's someone that I barely spoke to honestly, but when I was in college, I spent a semester studying abroad in France. I was a French major. I went to a university in Anjé, France, which is an hour and a half west of Paris and did an intensive for people learning French for this semester. And part of it is you live with a host family who's instructed to only speak French to you. So my host family, there was a mom and it was a radical, for me at the time, view on portrayal of womanhood because she was this mother, she was a wife, but she was also fully her own. She was this artist, she was a filmmaker. She had dinner dates with her friends. She came home late, she didn't make dinner every night. She made dinner a couple nights a week and then was like, "Yeah, you can find with yourselves." She wore red lipstick, she had a leather jacket. She was just so cool and so her, you could tell that she knew who she was and no aspect of who she was was compromised to fill the role of mother and of wife and of woman in this household. And she wore all of those hats with a lot of grace and a lot of authenticity. That was really refreshing to see. And she was super feminine. And we were in an era in the United States that I was coming from where in order to be powerful in these male dominated spaces, in order to inhabit places that men have power, I have to look like one for inhabit madness in some way, shape or form, in order to get by. - I think there is absolutely nothing about femininity that you have to change in order to be powerful. I think femininity can be powerful and I think it's more powerful in some ways, which is a whole other TED talk. But this host mom was one of my first portrayals of seeing that. This woman that was feminine, but also filled all these roles and also was clearly the head of her household. She was in charge. And so that was just really cool to see. And I went out all the time. I was never in the house. I was out in parks or traveling, the bars or restaurants, whatever we were doing. And I came back late and I thought everybody would be asleep and she was up, you know, making cup tea or something. And she stopped me and said, I love having you in this house because you're always out and going somewhere and that's really refreshing to see because a lot of times, exchange students will come and stay and they just never leave. And there's this whole world out there and you should go and be in it. So she was like, I love it. Keep going out. You never have to apologize for coming home late. 'Cause I think I probably apologize for when we were waking her up. And that was a super empowering moment that has stuck with me forever. Like go out into the world and be exactly who you are doing it and it's all gonna be fun. - And don't come home and apologize to me for it. - No, especially don't come home and apologize to me. This is a space I've made for you to do that, actually. - Yep. - Out in the world is exactly where you should be. There will be times for you to be in a house. And even then you shouldn't stay in the house that much. For example, but go out and be the age that you are and the person that you are in the place that you are. - Who helped you find your voice? - Oh, I said you. I mean that. I do mean that. I think that this podcast, I've gone through a lot of evolution in the past. I'm gonna call it year and a half, two years. I spend a lot of my career doing it the right way. I think I embodied that there's a way to do this and there's a way to be successful. And I have had incredible mentors and I've had incredible mentors make that space for me to find my voice. But I don't think I started looking for my own voice until this past year and a half or so. Some of that, actually, from being honest, comes from being a mom. So I would say that my three year old is probably one of my biggest mentors because I'm teaching him the importance of being himself and finding his voice and finding his personhood. And I want to mean the words I say. So I think on some level it, obviously, it had to be there. But I've gone through a really big developmental moment in the past year and a half where I recognize that I was censoring myself. I recognize that I was watering parts of myself down. And then I just stopped and it has made me feel more aligned with my work and being a mom and being a friend and knowing exactly who I want to be and how I want to spend my time. So it's really fun to start speaking in my own voice. I'd recommend. If anyone was to ever look at me on paper, right? Some type of biography data point profile about who I am. Okay, probably check a mold. I fit a lot of boxes. I don't know if it's saying that right, but-- But this is what a junior associate at a major law firm looks like. This is what a 20-something professional looks like. Yes. And but at the same time, I feel like I'm living that in the way that I want to be living that. And so checking those boxes doesn't feel caging. I've found my own voice in the way that check those boxes. And probably if you look to the deeper, I don't really check those boxes. I think that's why you are a mentor to me because I agree with you that you are doing this your way. And seeing you do it your way was such a refreshing reminder to me that I can do this my way to. And I think I had just convinced myself for a very long time that if I did it my way, I couldn't go as far. Like there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with my judgment or there was something wrong with my gut that just wasn't as good as insert people who have historically been successful in this profession. So I did emulate that of the people that have been crushing at this and lost myself in that process. And I think that's maybe the point that I was trying to make is that it can feel really revolutionary to be your own person in this existence and do it your way. Bring this back to mentorship. So I really do, I think that it's speaking in your voice even when it's hard and helping others see that they can speak in their voice. - Yeah. - Actually when it's hard. - Yes. - Because I do really think there's something that you cannot be what you cannot see. And so having a mentor or even just a role model, just someone you know of to-- - And being a mentor. - Yes. - And seeing that role model to people. - Yeah. And I think that can make the world of difference in the ability of someone to see themselves in this profession, to stay in this profession, to find a way to do it that makes them-- - More fun. - Definitely more fun. - Thanks for joining the conversation. You can find Bar Review wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe and share. Wanna keep the conversation going? Follow us on social at BarReview LLC. Onika will see you there and she'll tell me all about it. Got a question you want us to tackle in a future episode? Send it our way. We try to read every email. And just a reminder, we are not your lawyer. This is not legal advice and these opinions are just our own. Cheers.