AttorneyMentoring.com Home Page

AttorneyMentoring.com offers mentoring information, tools and
resources for attorneys at each stage of their legal career. Our mission
is to help attorneys create and implement effective, personalized career
plans. We help them better understand their strengths and weaknesses
and identify and reduce self-defeating patterns, improving both their legal
and business skills. We teach attorneys the business of lawyering,
enabling them to become more pro-active in their own career
development.

Considering a change?
Do you feel stuck in your current legal practice
and wonder what possessed you to go to law
school? If you have considered a career change,
there are many options for a JD-carrying
professional. Jim Kelly, Esq. started off his
career as a lawyer in a firm and subsequently
held various legal and senior executive
positions, including General Counsel, VP of a
Business Unit, VP of Marketing, VP of Human
Resources & Development among other titles
culminating in CEO. Read Jim Kelly's account of
his career journey from counsel to CEO in our
Alternative Careers for Lawyers section .

Have you ever wondered about the
nonprofit sector?
Check out our No np rofit Section to read a Profile
of Jane Hoffman, Esq., President of the
not-for-profit Mayor's Alliance for NYC's
Animals by Constance Young ©2006. Jane
Hoffman started out as a law librarian, then
experienced large law firm life, left to go into solo
practice, and finally realized her dream of
starting her own not-for-profit. Read her
inspiring story.

Improving Your Chances of Making Partner: Staying on
Track
One way to stay on track for partnership consideration is to act like an
owner. Learn the business side of lawyering. It involves the same skills
as growing any business. First you identify a product or service that you
believe is needed, confirm that need by researching the target
customer/client’s usage and practices, develop that product or service,
price it correctly, market it and then service those customers who have
purchased your product or service. And, you continually test and revise
that product or service against market realities. Apply the same
principles to your practice. Click here to read more.

Work/Life Balance: Where to Start
The first place to start creating a balance between your work and
personal life is to take an honest assessment of your personal and
professional goals. Make a date with yourself to spend some time listing
what is important to you. Then, identify how much of your life is spent
related to work activities and other categories of activities. Consider the
following categories of activities: work, family, significant other, friends,
health, fun, education, hobbies, volunteer activities. Finally, consider
whether the percentages of time spent on each reflects your personal
values. Click here to read more.

Why Become a Mentor?
Being a mentor is simply good business. If you
build a team around you that is loyal and
knowledgeable, you will succeed beyond your
expectations. Mentoring also allows you to create
a legacy. Click here to read more about
mentoring .

Understanding and Meeting Expectations
Once you have been hired it is important for you to understand what your
employer expects of you. It is also important to realize that employer
expectations change over time. Since each job or assignment will be a
little different depending upon the assigning partner and practice group
and thereby expectations will vary, here are some guidelines to keep in
mind as you work to improve your performance. A significant number of
performance problems can be attributed to poor communication
between senior lawyers/managers and their junior lawyer and it is not
always advisable to wait until year-end reviews to confirm that you are
meeting your department or firm's expectations.

Click here to read about some basic self management skills that can
help you better understand and meet your employer’s expectations.

Be a solution provider
Clients use lawyers because they have a
problem or want to avoid a problem. It is as
simple as that. As part of your customer service,
you must provide a solution for your client's
problem. If you are perceived as merely creating
more problems or raising more issues, you are
less likely to preserve that client relationship.
Similarly, if you are perceived as a naysayer, that
too will harm your relationship with the client.
Therefore, your order of the day is to strive to
solve your client’s problem or protect them from
future problems. If you raise an issue with a
client, be prepared to propose a solution or at
least a range of solutions with appropriate risk
assessments for each.

Click here for other helpful articles:

Lose Your Job?
Job loss is never easy and it is often completely outside of your control.
However, you can control your reaction and increase the likelihood that
you will successfully manage the transition. Check out our Transitions
section where we have created a checklist of action items and resources
for you if you have been terminated.

Analyze your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
(SWOT)

SWOT is the acronym of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
It is a simple, popular technique which can be used in preparing a career
plan or business plan, in problem solving and decision making and in
evaluating and improving your performance. The results will help you
address your weaknesses and threats, and exploit your strengths and
opportunities. A SWOT analysis can also create the impetus to help you
develop suitable strategies and tactics to improve your practice. Click
here to take a SWOT Analysis.

Pitching Business
Pitching business is an art. It takes practice and skilled presentation
skills. And, it takes time and effort to create compelling written and oral
scripts to distinguish your legal service offering from your competition.

Click here to read an article on how to create effective pitch materials.

Networking 101
Networking is an essential part of building a law
practice and/or finding new employment
opportunities, including expanding the amount of
business conducted with existing clients and
attracting new clients. Click here to learn more.