Your role as a Mentor Liaison is vital to the firm. Your oversight of the success of the mentor relationships in your office helps to ensure that our associates know how to access resources to help them develop as a practicing lawyer, learn about our firm's culture and workplace norms, and make lasting professional connections. We know that mentoring helps to improve job satisfaction and engagement and, ultimately, retention.
Each Holland & Knight office has at least one Mentor Liaison appointed by its Executive Partner. The Mentor Liaison serves as an extension of the Professional Development team, which oversees the firm's lawyer mentoring program. Members of our Professional Development team provide firmwide program support and guidance and maintain the official list of mentor pairs around the firm.
Primary Responsibilities of the Mentor Liaison
• Assign a partner mentor to each new associate, preferably before the associate arrives so the partner mentor can take the new associate to lunch on the first day. The welcome lunch can be allocated to the recruiting budget. We encourage you to consult with the PGL and Recruiting Manager for suggestions on the best fit.
• Generally, the partner mentor should be a partner; however, if a partner mentor is unavailable, you may assign an experienced senior counsel to serve as the mentor.
• Generally, partner mentors should be in different practice groups than their associate mentees. Regardless, the partner mentor should not be someone who supervises the associate's work.
• Assign a peer mentor to level 1 and 2 associates, preferably before the associate arrives so the peer mentor can join the partner mentor and mentee for lunch on the first day. The peer mentor should be a year or two more experienced than the mentee and, ideally, would be another associate within the mentee's same practice group.
• Ask the partner and peer mentors personally if they are willing to serve. Delegating this task to an administrative person may lessen the perceived seriousness of the role.
• Provide the mentors with a copy of the Guide for Partner Mentors to help the mentor get started.
• Partner mentors participate in the mentee's formal evaluation meetings. While this is noted in the mentor guide, you may want to point this out to the partner mentor. Let the partner mentor know that more information about the Performance Evaluation process can be found on the HK Today Profess ional Development page
• Check in with each mentor pair in the office at least every six months, especially after evaluation meetings to encourage follow-up.
• Reassign mentors as requested or appropriate. Assign a new mentor if a mentor leaves the firm.
• Keep the career coach for your office (Kris Butler or Jennifer Snow), as well as Cindy Lindsley, informed of any mentor changes so the master list can be updated.
Relevant Firm Policies
• Mentor lunches, other than first day lunches, are not reim bursable. Paying for coffee, lunch or other meals is part of the partner mentor's commitment to mentoring.
• Mentoring events other than those planned by the Professional Development department are generally not reimbursable. A Mentor Liaison may ask the Executive Partner if the office's budget might cover the cost of an event.
• Associates may request an affinity mentor, in which case the Mentor Liaison should work with the chair of the appropriate affinity group or the respective career coach if the affinity is one for which the firm does not have a formal affinity group (e.g., judicial clerks or law school alumni).