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Mentoring Committee

The Committee on Mentoring is responsible for planning, coordinating, facilitating, and implementing the mentoring initiatives of the Section.

An Introduction to Mentoring

In Homer’s Odyssey, when he has to go off to fight the Trojan War, Odysseus entrusts his kingdom to Mentor. During the time that Odysseus is away, Mentor also serves as a teacher and guide to Odysseys’ son, Telemachus.

Today, most of our mentoring relationships aren’t the by-products of war. For instance, firms often assign mentors to their junior associates. These forced relationships are met with varying degrees of success. Frequently, assigned mentors don’t really want to take the time necessary to build an effective mentoring relationship. And sometimes your mentor will practice in a different area, leaving you with no one to go to with substantive questions.

The Young Lawyers Section, through its mentoring program, seeks to pick up where these plans fail. The Section’s Mentoring Directory includes a list of more than 275 lawyers, all willing to provide young lawyers with targeted guidance in specific areas important to their practice. In addition, over the course of the next year, the Section will be rolling out other information and programs to which you can refer for teaching and guidance.

YLS Mentor Initiatives for 2007-2008

(1) Revamping the YLS Mentor Directory and making the program more user-friendly.

(2) Implementing a program in NYS similar to the Ten Minute Mentor program run by the Texas Young Lawyers Association. Go to www.tenminutementor.com to get an idea of the program. We would like to go one step further than the TYLA program and make the ten-minute lessons downloadable into podcasts;

(3) Coordinating with the other sections of the New York State Bar Association to implement a traditional mentoring plan, and

(4) Increase the professional and personal development programming of the Young Lawyers Section.

Please feel free to contact me at christina.bost-seaton@troutmansanders.com with any suggestions you may have as to how the Section can better serve your mentoring needs.