Mentoring Lawyers

If you are a skilled legal professional, you know incivility within the profession has reached epidemic proportions. James H. Fierberg spent almost forty years practicing law at the highest levels, and he suggests the profession can solve the problem by paying attention to something it has mostly ignored: mentoring lawyers. In fact, he argues that mentoring programs can help to elevate save the profession and also remove some of the world’s rampant toxicity. He answers questions such as: • How can firms urge an early and comprehensive mindful moral inventory of new attorneys? • What can firms do to help lawyers cultivate positive interpersonal skills and progress in the legal profession? • What can senior lawyers do to nurture a legacy for themselves, their firms, and their brands? Mindful mentors must not only commit to teaching mentees—they must encourage them to come to terms with exactly who they are, how they got to this point, and how they will establish themselves in the community of law moving forward.

This volume features papers written in honor of Mauro Bussani, and celebrates the work and contributions of this renowned scholar of comparative law. The content reflects the various theoretical and practical areas in which he has already left a lasting mark. The essays explore the theory and practice of comparative law in different areas and contexts, and highlight innovative approaches to a large variety of hot-topic private and public law subjects. The authors include young scholars, lawyers, legal consultants, human rights activists, and practitioners, all of whom Professor Bussani has trained, supervised, and supported throughout their careers. The contributions emphasize the many ways in which Professor Bussani’s teaching and scientific output have enriched, revolutionized, and challenged both theory and practice. They cover e.g. the law of secured transactions, Western law and legal pluralism, fashion law, contract law in China and in the Arab World, contract and tort in the West, scientific evidence, risk regulation, global finance, human rights indicators, anti-discrimination laws, democracy and climate change law.

A Perfect Resource for Both Mentees and Mentors You can call it "speed mentoring" or "60-minute" mentoring. Just keep this in mind: Momentous things can happen in a moment and episodic mentoring sessions create such moments. In 60-Minute Mentoring for Lawyers and Law Students, a timely and readable guide, you will learn how to use 60-minute mentoring--with its focus on professionalism and life-long learning--to be a better lawyer and colleague. Small Commitments, Big Results Amy Timmer, Associate Dean of Students and Professionalism at WMU-Cooley Law School, and attorney Matthew Cristiano describe how lawyers, law firms, law students and bar associations can successfully use 60-minute mentoring in place of (or alongside) traditional matched-pair mentoring programs. Packed with sample questions, anecdotes and checklists, the book's four parts and 19 chapters explain everything mentors and mentees need to know about episodic mentoring, including: Questions young lawyers and law students should ask How to find, plan for and maximize mentoring sessions Mentee personality types What a 60-minute mentoring session looks like Episodic mentoring for bar association member development, new member orientation, and attorney development Partnering with law schools Why teaching professionalism matters In the past six years, more states have looked to mentoring to ease the introduction of new lawyers into the practice of law. At the same time, many affinity, local, and specialty bar associations have looked for ways to recruit and integrate new members into their existing membership using mentoring. The advantages are obvious: new attorneys need mentors not just to help them with legal issues, but to build a referral network, to become engaged with the legal community, to experience the values and customs of the local bar, to be exposed to continuing legal education and pro bono opportunities ... and on and on. The book is divided into 19 chapters: Chapter 1: What Is Mentoring? Chapter 2: Types of Mentoring Chapter 3: Understanding Episodic Mentoring Chapter 4: Perspectives on Diversity in Episodic Mentoring Chapter 5: The Focus on Ethics and Professionalism: The Common Bond Chapter 6: Find, Plan for, and Maximize Mentoring Episodes Chapter 7: Mentee Personality Types Chapter 8: The Episodic Mentoring Session Chapter 9: Feedback from the Episodic Mentoring Study Chapter 10: When Mentoring Goes Bad Chapter 11: Keeping in Touch with Mentors Chapter 12: How to Become a Mentor Chapter 13: Mentor Personalities and Approaches Chapter 14: A Template for Professionalism Mentoring Chapter 15: What Mentees Bring to the Relationship Chapter 16: Episodic Mentoring for Membership Development Chapter 17: Episodic Mentoring for New Members Chapter 18: Episodic Mentoring for Attorney Development Chapter 19: Partnering with a Local Law School

As defender of both the righteous and the questionable, Alan Dershowitz has become perhaps the most famous and outspoken attorney in the land. Whether or not they agree with his legal tactics, most people would agree that he possesses a powerful and profound sense of justice. In this meditation on his profession, Dershowitz writes about life, law, and the opportunities that young lawyers have to do good and do well at the same time. We live in an age of growing dissatisfaction with law as a career, which ironically comes at a time of unprecedented wealth for many lawyers. Dershowitz addresses this paradox, as well as the uncomfortable reality of working hard for clients who are often without many redeeming qualities. He writes about the lure of money, fame, and power, as well as about the seduction of success. In the process, he conveys some of the ''tricks of the trade'' that have helped him win cases and become successful at the art and practice of ''lawyering.''

In What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice, author Susan Smith Blakely expands her audience beyond young women lawyers to ALL young lawyers and those who lead them. Following the success of her three-book Best Friends at that Bar series, Ms. Blakely shifts her focus to millennial lawyers who are the future of the law profession. This book is for: Law students to understand current practices, what needs to be changed, and how to fit into an evolving profession; Law firm associates to validate their instincts about outdated law firm policies and toxic law firm cultures; and Law firm leaders to understand millennial lawyers and to make the necessary changes to law firm cultures to retain talent and lead them into the next quarter of the 21st century. Through extensive research about millennial lawyers and by millennial lawyers as well as entertaining and inspirational stories of lawyers from a generation past, Blakely makes a case that demonstrates a healthier path forward for a profession in transition—a path enriched by recapture of the values and beliefs, which successfully guided lawyers of the Greatest Generation. The message is that bad habits and toxic environments are not beyond repair if we listen to the voices of a new generation of lawyers and help them—and us—find a better way forward. You will learn: The facts about millennial lawyers; The values that millennial lawyers bring to the profession; What millennial lawyers want from law practice; The challenge for law firms to initiate change to retain and develop millennial lawyers; and Lessons from real life stories demonstrating values lost but not forgotten.

Lawyers today are in a moral crisis. The popular perception of the lawyer, both within the legal community and beyond, is no longer the Abe Lincoln of American mythology, but is often a greedy, cynical manipulator of access and power. In The Lawyer's Myth, Walter Bennett goes beyond the caricatures to explore the deeper causes of why lawyers are losing their profession and what it will take to bring it back. Bennett draws on his experience as a lawyer, judge, and law teacher, as well as upon oral histories of lawyers and judges, in his exploration of how and why the legal profession has lost its ennobling mythology. Effectively using examples from history, philosophy, psychology, mythology, and literature, Bennett shows that the loss of professionalism is more than merely the emergence of win-at-all-cost strategies and a scramble for personal wealth. It is something more profound—a loss of professional community and soul. Bennett identifies the old heroic myths of American lawyers and shows how they informed the values of professionalism through the middle of the last century. He shows why, in our more diverse society, those myths are inadequate guides for today's lawyers. And he also discusses the profession's agony over its trickster image and demonstrates how that archetype is not only a psychological reality, but a necessary component of a vibrant professional mythology for lawyers. At the heart of Bennett's eloquently written book is a call to reinvigorate the legal professional community. To do this, lawyers must revive their creative capacities and develop a meaningful, professional mythology—one based on a deeper understanding of professionalism and a broader, more compassionate ideal of justice.