Neil Hamilton & Lisa Montpetit Brabbit, “Fostering Professionalism through Mentoring”

This article mentor relationships as fostering professionalism. Notably, literature often defines the two as distinct principles. The authors note that “a mentor in the legal profession is a person who helps a lawyer (or law student) develop professionally both in internalizing the principles of professionalism and in achieving the protege’s personal professional goals” (106). The career mentoring function should help the protégé develop: networking, marketing within the organization and with potential clients, initiating and growing successful mentoring relationships, career planning and implementation, teamwork with staff and other lawyers, and self-organization and time management.

Furthermore, the “close connection between role modeling and professional skill development suggests role modeling is a separate mentoring function distinct from the career mentoring function” (108). The role model is able to set an example by modeling technical knowledge and relationship skills that are necessary for professional roles. The authors suggest a formal mentoring program should be used to teach professionalism that has clear objectives relating to specific career, psychosocial, and role modeling mentoring function skills that the protégé would develop with the assistance of the mentor. This program should be taught to students but cannot be taught in the doctrinal classroom.

Neil Hamilton & Lisa Montpetit Brabbit, “Fostering Professionalism through Mentoring” (2007) 57:1 J Legal Educ 102.