Even though men typically receive
more informal mentoring than women, it is important that all associates feel that they are being treated fairly.
Less mentoring: Most senior partners received much
more informal mentoring when they were starting out in law.
Not exact matches
More often than not, even if your business seems like a fantastic opportunity to one of the Members that attends the
informal pitching session, they will still want to spend a few months
mentoring your company before agreeing to be your official Sponsor at a Cambridge Angels dinner event.
Some have formal
mentoring programs while others offer new teachers
more informal tutelage.
When placed in the context of a law firm, this means that millennial lawyers are
more comfortable with
more informal communication platforms (e.g. instant messaging), frequently request for feedback and
mentoring, and prefer freedom and flexibility in the workplace.
Mentoring relationships can be
informal and unstructured,
more complex and procedure - based, or somewhere in between.
Research shows that white male associates benefit from
informal mentoring, while persons of colour are
more likely to be excluded from such opportunities, which is why sponsorship is key.
Now is a good time to review and update your
mentoring programs and
informal mentoring practices to add some approaches
more in line with modern attitudes, constraints and work conditions.
For smaller firms,
informal mentoring is
more common than a formal
mentoring program.
However,
informal mentoring is often easier to do, and can be
more successful than formal programs precisely because the relationships happen
more organically than through participation in a compulsory program at a firm, for example.
Even at firms with
more than 500 attorneys,
more than 70 % of attorneys said they had
informal mentoring relationships.