Lawyers know that they need to think seriously about how to advance their careers and develop a strategy and a plan to get from where they are today to where they want to be in the future. In order for you to execute your plan, you will need support; you can’t do it alone. You will need to thoughtfully create and cultivate relationships, and within your firm** you’ll find a few important ones that can help you gain career momentum.
The first group of relationships critical for lawyers to cultivate is mentors. Mentors are more experienced lawyers who are willing to take you under their wing to “show you the ropes,” to answer your questions, to share their knowledge and experience and train you in the skills you need to reach the level of excellence you need to succeed as a lawyer in today’s highly competitive legal marketplace. Mentors aren’t only needed by young lawyers to get them started in developing their expertise; they continue to be needed as you grow and advance in your career. In fact, you will often need different mentors later in your career than you needed early in your career. When you are executing your plan to advance your career, you will need mentors who can teach you about the firm’s political landscape and how to navigate it. Once you know where you are going and who can help you get there, your mentors can introduce you to those whom you need to know. You can take it from there.
The second group of relationships that are even more critical to your career success is sponsors. You are likely to have a number of mentors in your career, but only a few sponsors, because a sponsor’s commitment to you is much deeper. A sponsor is someone who goes beyond acting as your teacher. He/she acts as your advocate and spends his/her political capital to insure your advancement. This can include everything from making sure that you are included on a team working on visible and lucrative matters for the firm’s most important clients to inviting you to participate on pitches for new business and then working to assure that you are given some credit for the business if the pitch is successful. It can also include campaigning for your election to partnership, advocating for you to be elected to an important firm committee or leadership role or making sure that you become the successor billing partner for his/her clients when he/she retires.
So, how do you find and build relationships with mentors and sponsors? You start by focusing on building relationships with a few mentors in the practice group to which you are assigned. Ideally, you want to choose to work with those partners who have a reputation for excellence and the highest integrity and who have a healthy book of business with clients who have a steady stream of the kind of work that truly interests you. The key to developing these relationships is bring to them an attitude of giving; to focus first on what you can do for a potential mentor or sponsor. You need to prove yourself over time as someone who is willing to work hard; who is passionate about excellence and wants to learn and gain more skills; who will volunteer for difficult and challenging assignments and for those assignments that no one else wants to do; who is reliable and who can be depended upon to meet deadlines, be responsive to clients and who will generally support the mentor or sponsor and make him/her look good to his/her peers and clients.
Once you have built these valuable relationships of trust with mentors or sponsors and they recognize your commitment and loyalty, you will then be in the position to proactively ask for their help and support in both creating your career strategy and executing each move in your plan. This sort of help, especially at a sponsor’s level of commitment, is not an entitlement; it needs to be earned over time. Patience and hard work are required, combined with the courage and tenacity to affirmatively ask for and advocate for what you want. But, if you have chosen your mentors and sponsors well and proven your value to them, when the time is right, you can receive the help you need to propel you toward the kind of success you have envisioned for yourself.
Good luck!
** Note: Although some of the examples describing the ways in which a mentor or sponsor can help you would be different, this advice is equally relevant to you if you work as in-house counsel at a company.