Editorial
Front Page - Friday, February 19, 2010
Bar Association planning new attorney mentoring program
David Laprad
Norm Sabin of the law firm Sabin & Associates answers questions from Scott Maucere, a young attorney. The Chattanooga Bar Association is preparing to launch a mentorship program that will encourage relationships, such as this one, between experienced lawyers and attorneys fresh out of law school.
- David Laprad
During the annual Chattanooga Bar Association Luncheon in January, the newly appointed president of the organization, attorney John Rice, slipped something intriguing into his acceptance speech. He said he wants to see a return of the mentoring relationships that helped to shape the generation of lawyers now defined by their experience, wisdom and gray hair. What form would the relationships take? He didn’t say.
But Rice did open up about the topic earlier this month during an interview in his office on North Market Street. He was glad to answer questions about what the bar is thinking about doing because mentoring is something in which he believes, partly as a result of personal experience. From his brother-in-law, to his high school English teacher, to the dean of his law school, to the senior partners at his first firm, Rice said someone has always been there to help him.
Many people throughout history experienced what Rice found to be true. The mentoring relationship has had such a significant impact on civilization, there are entire Web sites dedicated to cataloging the great leaders throughout time and their mentors.
Elijah mentored Elisha, Julius Caesar mentored Mark Antony, Ghandi mentored Martin Luther King, Ralph Waldo Emerson mentored Henry David Thoreau, Michele Robinson mentored President Obama – and on and on it goes.
The mentoring relationship has even been a major force in fiction and mythology. Where would Luke Skywalker be without Obi-Wan Kenobi? Probably shooting womp rats in his T-16 back home on Tatooine.
Yet the pairing, as it existed a few decades ago among attorneys in Chattanooga, is almost non-existent.
The young lawyers fortunate enough to have landed a job at a large firm have the guidance of their senior partners, like Rice did, but because of the global recession, the larger firms are either not hiring or have cut back on new blood, and as a result, a lot of new attorneys are striking out on their own.
The problem, Rice said, is that they still have a lot to learn.
“We have a lot of young lawyers hanging a shingle and trying to file a pleading without asking for help,” he said. “Law schools are good training grounds, but there are ethical rules that apply to many of the things an attorney does, especially how a lawyer treats the bench and the bar, and you need a sounding board for those things.”
During an interview even earlier this month, Lynda Hood, executive director of the bar, mentioned a few other procedures with which a new attorney might need assistance, such as how to manage a trust account for client funds. “There are a lot of things they don’t teach in law school,” she said. “When you graduate, you think you know it all, but you don’t.”
Not all of the missing pieces are procedural. Rice is especially concerned about the lack of civility that can crop up when a young lawyer becomes overzealous in a courtroom. “Some new attorneys think if they yell louder, it makes them more important,” he said.
Rice and Hood also said a mentor could help a young lawyer with such essentials as opening an office, learning to document things, the importance of returning phone calls, managing one’s time, the value of getting to know the judges — and on and on it goes.
“Some of them haven’t even been in a courtroom, so they don’t know the procedures,” Rice said. “They need somebody to show them the path they need to follow to be successful with a case.”
The mentoring program the bar is looking at putting in place could end up being similar to one the organization implemented in 1999 and used for a short time. Essentially, it involved a simple pairing of seasoned attorneys and tenderfoots.
“We put together a group of mentors — your Max Bahners, your John Stophels and your Jerry Summerses,” Hood said. “There was a long list of them.”
It was an elegant framework, yet none of the young lawyers in Chattanooga took advantage of it, so after a year or two, the bar shut it down.
Rice cites the healthy economy at the time as one reason the original mentoring program didn’t take off. “We weren’t in a recession, and most attorneys were coming out of law school with jobs, so they had mentors where they worked. But we don’t have that now. About half of the practicing lawyers in Chattanooga are sole or dual practitioners.”
That leaves a lot of gaps for the bar to fill, but it’s not the only challenge Rice and company are facing; Hood said pride might also have been a factor. “Perhaps they were too proud to ask questions,” she said. “Maybe they felt like they’d be asking about something they should already know. But you have to ask questions. It’s the only way you’ll learn.”
Rice said confidentiality might have been an issue as well. He also said he believes it will be under the new program.
In addition, Hood said young lawyers are busier than ever, and might not have time to speak with a mentor. “New attorneys are constantly working. They don’t have a few minutes to talk on the phone,” she said. “They might want to but they can’t.”
Regardless, Rice said the bar hopes to have veteran attorneys voluntarily list themselves as mentors and then publish those names to the bar. He also said non-bar members would be welcome to ask for a mentor. “I want lawyers to be successful in their jobs,” he said. “That’s important to society.”
Hood has been the executive director of the bar for 16 years, and said she can see a big difference in the attorneys who had mentors when she first arrived. “Some of them have grown and changed and become awesome lawyers.”
Rice said the urgent need for young attorneys to place themselves under the tutelage of a mentor is not a case of older lawyers trying to tell the whippersnappers how things are done; rather, it’s a matter of preserving the dignity of the profession.
“Becoming a professional involves a learning curve,” he said. “But you need to learn these things so you can carry forward the traditions of the practice of law in this state and this town.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t have said it better.
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