St. Thomas Law Mentor Blog

I read a good blog post on Lawyerist about communication skills for lawyers.  The article highlights some “traditional” communication skills, like phone calls, snail mail, and face to face meetings, that lawyers sometimes forget or forsake in favor of e-mail or other social media communications.

This post struck a chord with me because communication challenges are one of the biggest issues I confront working with students and mentors in our program.  There seems to be some disconnect between how students prefer to communicate and how mentors prefer to communicate.  Students often seem to prefer e-mail while mentors often seem to prefer phone.  This difference is hinted at in the comments to the original Lawyerist post.

I have already posted once about communications challenges so I do not want to simply repeat those points.  The Lawyerist post and the comments gave me a new perspective on this issue and maybe a new way to think about it.  I agree with the comment that some in the profession can be too dismissive of communication from social media or other new technology.  I think that these tools do have a lot to offer and by extension, newer lawyers with greater proficiency with these tools have a lot to teach us.  On the other hand, I also think that new lawyers can fall into the trap of convenience and become overly reliant on these technologies.  Because social media and e-mail are convenient, newer lawyers lose their comfort with more direct interpersonal communication like phone or face to face meetings.

Not every communication requires the same tools, nor is every relationship the same.  Perhaps  lawyers should think of e-mail, social media and other technologies as supplements to traditional communications rather than replacements.  We should be taking advantage of how social media and e-mail can improve the client relationship, mentor relationships, or other professional activities while acknowledging that those tools cannot replace the essential interpersonal communication skills lawyers must have.  In other words, think of all your communications options as tools in a tool box and for each piece of communication think about which of the tools is the best fit, not necessarily the easiest to grab.  If you don’t have the right tools for each job you are unlikely to do the job the well.  As the old saying goes, “if all you have is a hammer than everything starts to look like a nail.”  If you rely too heavily on e-mail and social media then you miss the chance for deeper and better relationships at a minimum and perhaps contribute to a decline in the relationship at the maximum.

Our student contributors recently each shared their thoughts on how they select a mentor.  They offered some great insights about what they look for and how they think through the process.  I want to take a moment to build on some of their thoughts and share the director’s perspective on pairing students and mentors. 

In directing a large formal mentor program I invest a lot of time and energy into coming up with the best possible parings for each student.  I think Adam and Callie did a great job identifying some things for students to think through as they give me information about what they would like in a mentor.  At the same time I want to add some caveats.

First, I am a firm believer that every mentor relationship has something to offer.  For an upper level student at the University of St. Thomas we pair them based on practice areas of interest.  However, as both Callie and Adam know, first year law school students often don’t know what they want to see or do.  In pairing up our first year students we pair them with mentors who practice in the core curricular areas.  Sometimes at first blush a student might not think that a mentor’s practice area may have a lot to offer.  For example, a student who is leaning towards transactional practice may think initially being fit with a litigator is a bad fit.  A couple key things to consider: first, what you want to do with your practice often changes during your three years of law school.  Being paired with a mentor who does something new to you is a great way to explore a new area of law.  Sometimes the reasons you may avoid a practice area have to do with misconceptions about it, which is not necessarily an accurate view of what the area will be like.  A mentor can help show you the truth about that practice area. 

Second, relationships are the life blood of a lawyer’s practice.  Even if your current mentor does not practice in the area that you want to practice in, down the road you may need his or her expertise.  Great transactional lawyers understand the litigation process.  They also know great litigators to whom they can refer work or ask questions.  Even if your instincts are correct and litigation is not for you there is still a lot you can learn a lot that will make you a better lawyer down the road. 

Third, even if your mentor does not do exactly what you want to do most likely your mentor knows someone who does.  That means investing into the mentor relationship and developing a good professional friendship can open doors to where you ultimately want to be.  It is amazing how many mentors report to me that their students never ask who the mentor could connect them to.

In addition to keeping an open mind about practice area, it is also important to keep an open mind about some of the other aspects of a mentor pairing.  In his blog post Adam does a great job of setting out some things to consider about practice settings, gender, and other factors that may facilitate a good relationship. Keep in mind, though, that some of the most important relationships you have are with people that are different from you.  Indeed, in practicing law you are going to need to effectively work with people from all different ethnicities, the opposite gender, different political viewpoints, different religious backgrounds, and a whole host of other diverse characteristics.  While it can be initially comfortable to work with a mentor whose background and viewpoints are similar to your own, don’t miss out on the opportunity to expand your horizons by working with someone who is different than you in some fashion.  Not only does doing so give you the opportunity to develop some key professional skills it will also help you grow as a person.

The pairings process matters and it is worth the investment of time that we put into it to create the best possible match for each protégé.  Even with all that effort, though, it is the protégé’s attitude that serves as the biggest predictor of whether the relationship will flourish.  Being energetic, enthusiastic, and open minded about your mentor relationship virtually guarantees success.  If you approach your mentor relationships with a positive attitude about what you can learn from it then you are virtually assured of a great experience.

With all apologies to Ben Lee, this is not a blog post about his song.  The May 2010 edition of Men’s Health magazine contains an interesting summary of research done by Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. According to Christakis, our feelings are contagious. The study demonstrated that feelings of happiness or loneliness, or self-images, especially related to physical appearance, are heavily impacted by the people with whom I spend a lot of time. Surrounding yourself with positive and happy people makes it more likely that you will be positive and happy. The reverse also seems be true. If you surround yourself with people who have a negative worldview, then you are likely to have a negative outlook too.

This research can be applied to mentors.  Not only are your mentors directly mentoring you, they’re also having an indirect impact on your attitudes and happiness. We’ve been posting this summer about how to choose good mentors. This concept that attitudes are contagious provides another factor to consider. We need to be surrounding ourselves with a critical mass of mentors, including peer mentors, who are “infecting” us with the right attitudes. We need colleagues and more experienced lawyers who enjoy their work and enjoy being a lawyer.  Those attitudes will help “infect” new lawyers with that same positive view of our profession. 

This seems relatively simple until you consider how many conversations you have each day that revolve around complaints or other negative interactions. In fact, there is research to suggest that lawyers are more pessimistic than the general population. Pessimism, it seems, is the common cold of the legal profession: easy to catch, but seldom fatal. At the same time, one step to a better professional life is to build your constellation of mentors with people who are “infecting” you with the right attitudes.  So, take a moment and examine your relationships with friends and mentors.  Are you catching the right “disease”?