St. Thomas Law Mentor Blog

We have often talked about mentor externship as exploring the power of relationships.  We generally looked at the power of relationships to improve our professional lives and our professional success.  A good friend of mine sent an article suggesting that it may be more.  It may be that the power of relationships is the power to be happy.

In the June 2009 edition of the Atlantic, author Joshua Wolf Shenk has a long summary in his article “What Makes Us Happy?’  Summarizing the work of a seventy-two year old study on what made a group of men happy and successful over the course of their lives.  The study’s main director Is George Vaillant.

The study had far-ranging goals, including analyzing what makes people successful, happy, and well adjusted.  What stood out to Vaillant himself, however, was what he described as the 

power of relationships.  “It is social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class that leads to successful aging.” (page 46).  Vaillant summed up what he learned from the article by saying “the only thing that really matters in life are your relationship with other people”.

This statement has particular significance for the legal profession given our high instances of depression, substance abuse, and career dissatisfaction.  As we explore the power of relationships in the legal profession, I have asked my students to consider whether the lawyers who are the most successful and satisfied in their careers are those who can successfully identify and manage the key relationships lawyers must balance.  If Vaillant is correct, however, successfully managing these relationships may turn out to lead to more than professional success and career satisfaction.  It may turn out to lead to happiness itself.

The theme for mentor externship is the power of relationships in the law.  We spend a lot of time analyzing all of the key relationships that lawyers have to manage.  One relationship that often gets overlook is the relationship a lawyer has with his own support staff and with the clerks and support staff of others.  We emphasize in mentor externship the importance and acknowledging and respecting the skills and training of professional staff.  While your professional staff or the professional staff of lawyers and judges with whom you are dealing may have different training or experience than you, they are professionals nonetheless and treated with respect. 

In the context of your own professional staff, administrative assistants and paralegals with whom you work are essential teammates in producing successful results for the client.  As a brand new lawyer they frequently know more than you will.  Additionally, the partners and more senior attorneys for whom you work often ask for and value the opinions of the support staff about new lawyers. 

Similarly, a new lawyer should never disrespect the clerks and support staff who work for opposing counsel or the judges in front of whom you are appearing.  Again, many judges seek out and respect the opinions of their clerks and support staff about the lawyers appearing in front of them.  How you treat those relationships will say a lot about you.  Rude or disrespectful behavior towards the judge’s clerk or support staff not only harms your professional reputation but can get you into a lot of trouble.  Minnesota Lawyer newspaper reported one such cautionary tale last week.  You can read about in week’s bar buzz (the link to the online story is accessible to subscribers only).

 A local public defender found herself in contempt of court after ignoring a judge’s instructions that had been relayed through the judge’s clerk.  This lawyer took the position that she only needed to respond to orders from the judge himself not orders from the judge’s clerk.  Further compounding the situation was her rude behavior toward the judge’s clerk including turning her back and leaving the courtroom while the clerk was still speaking with her.

 The behavior described in the Minnesota Lawyer is foolish for a number of reasons.  First, and most importantly, the lawyer’s behavior was rude and disrespectful in any context not just in the context of a court setting.  There is simply no good justification for treating anyone involved in the legal system with contempt or disrespect. 

From a practical standpoint this lawyer has now severely damaged her reputation.  After the incident happened there was an e-mail exchange amongst all the judges’ clerks in this particular county describing the lawyer’s behavior and the judge’s response to it.  One suspects this lawyer’s credibility is now damaged when appearing in front of any of these judges or clerks in the future.  Now that the situation has been reported by Minnesota Lawyer the lawyer’s reputation has also been impacted throughout the Minnesota legal community.  For the lawyers in town who have never met the public defender, this is now their first impression of her.

As St. Thomas students prepared to enter the profession I hope they are continuing to recognize the power of relationships.  I also hope they are recognizing that the power of relationships is a double edge sword.  We should hold ourselves to the highest standards and seek to cultivate healthy, respectful professional relationships with all the different people we encounter in our profession.  The power of building those positive relationships will open doors and lead to a number of opportunities.  Those who fail to conduct themselves at the highest standards, however, may find that the power of relationships creates a powerful barrier to overcome.

As we approach the midway point of the school year I begin to have more student traffic seeking advice about how to get the most out of a mentor relationship.  It is a good question for students to consider.  There are lots of obvious things that a mentor in the St. Thomas program can provide to you like the opportunity to observe them in court, to observe them in client meetings, to review pleadings and other documents related to the mentor’s practice and to network with the mentor’s contacts.  Generally students recognize those opportunities.  However, I also want to encourage students to think creatively about what their mentors can offer. 

 Once you have done some of the experiences that seem obvious to you I would recommend you debrief with your mentor about how you can better prepare yourself to succeed in our profession.  Ask your mentor this key question: What are a few things that you most wish lawyers entering your practice area knew or where prepared to do?  That question opens the door to the mentor sharing her wisdom about what is going to be most essential for the practice area.  The advice may be something you have not thought of before such as the need to generate your own clients or business in that particular practice area. It may be a skill set that you can acquire during law school by taking something like trial advocacy. It may be working on your writing skills, or a specific type of writing skill. This is your opportunity to get the inside scoop from your mentor that can put you ahead on the path of professional success.  Take advantage of the opportunity by asking the question and talk about the answer you get.  Now that you know which skills your mentor views as essential for professional success, begin building some additional mentor experiences or debriefings around understanding and acquiring those skills.  Plan out the rest of your year to see and practice the skills or experiences your mentor just outlined.

One key challenge to building a successful mentor relationship is having a successful communication strategy.  A mentor relationship is not going to grow and develop if neither the mentor nor protégée are not communicating and connecting on a regular basis.  Communication challenges are often exacerbated by generational differences in communication. 

 Many of the protégées in our program prefer to use e-mail as their primary method of communication.  In fact, fewer and fewer people even have a home telephone.  If all you have is a cell phone and you are worried about how many minutes per month you are using it, you are less likely to think of your phone as a primary communication method and certainly not as likely to give your phone number to a wide range of people.

Many mentors, on the other hand, prefer phone as a primary communication method.  Certainly, e-mail use is continuing to increase but mentors who prefer the phone or face-to-face or less likely to offer a detailed response to an e-mail.

 An additional problem with using e-mail as a primary communication tool is the sheer volume of e-mail that gets transacted during the business day for both mentors and protégées.  It is easy to lose track of an e-mail that at first read was prioritized as something to deal with later.  Further, businesses are becoming more and more restrictive in how they filter out potential spam.  Sometimes a mentor needs to authorize receipt of e-mails from a particular domain before it will even appear in the inbox.

All of this can lead to delayed or missed communication between mentors and protégés.  Communication concerns between protégés and mentors are one of the key problems I am asked to help students resolve.

 So what are some helpful strategies for overcoming communication challenges?  First, pick up the telephone.  If you are not getting a response to your e-mail it may be because either your mentor is not proficient at managing the e-mail volume he or she receives every day, or, more likely, for some reason your e-mails are not even go through picking up the phone is a great way to resolve that issue.  Give your mentor a call and set up your next meeting on the telephone.  When you get your mentor on the phone be sure to confirm whether your mentor is in fact receiving your e-mails.  If your mentor is not receiving your e-mails find out what steps need to be taken so they go through.

 Next, never underestimate the power of your mentor’s support staff.  If you are having trouble connecting with your mentor via e-mail or telephone contact the main receptionist at your mentor’s place of employment and ask to speak with your mentor’s administrative assistant.  When you get the administrative assistant ask to schedule a specific time for a telephone conference with your mentor.  That ensures an end to the game of phone tag by guaranteeing that your mentor is expecting you to call and at his or her telephone to make the connection.  With your mentor’s permission you may also consider to ask his or her administrative association for a preview of upcoming events on your mentor’s calendar.  That way when the telephone conference occurs you can identify some upcoming things you would like to do with your mentor eliminating some of the back and forth when trying to schedule.

 Finally, if you are still having trouble establishing good communication lines with your mentor take advantage of the administrative support that a formal program like ours as to offer.   A successful formal mentor program is like a three legged stool.  The administration of the mentor program is the third leg of the stool and is there to help.

I was ready to put the time management topic to bed after four posts (in fact I have a post on another topic coming tomorrow), but then a student passed this along to me.  It seems that PepsiCo is facing a $1.2 billion default judgment in Wisconsin.  You can read about it here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Price-to-PepsiCo-for-Not-law-3214509113.html/print?x=0.  A few things caught my eye about the Yahoo article that relate to our blog discussions on time management. 

First, when PepsiCo received a letter about the law suit, the letter was put aside because the office was busy preparing for a board meeting.  Of course, prioritizing matters during difficult times is a reasonable and necessary skill.  What stands out here, though, is that after the letter was set aside it was forgotten until the default judgment arrived.  The situation sure sounds like Prof. Organ’s post about the explanation students provided for their late journals.  Prioritization without organization can lead to disaster!  If you need to set something aside to deal with a greater priority it is essential that you have a good organizational system to make sure you do not lose track of what you set aside.

The second thing that stands out here is that, like individual lawyers, organizations need to have good organizational systems to make sure nothing gets lost.  Part of that process is making sure that everyone in the office is one the same page.  Assuming the Yahoo article is accurate, a lawyer’s administrative assistant made the decision about what to do with letters and other documents in the law suit. It is not clear who, if anyone, was supervising those decisions or if the administratvie assistant told anyone about the letter.  We lawyers are responsible for the actions of our support staff.  As a result, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we are clearly and effectively communicating our expectations about organizing things.  Here it does not seem like there was a good system of institutional organization to keep on top of the case. 

It is too early to say how this case will resolve and none of us have enough information to evaluate the merits of the underlying law suit.  It is another good example, though, of why law students (and lawyers) should always be evaluating their systems of organization and looking for ways to improve.  The costs of mistakes can be huge!