Mentoring and the legal profession: Developing professionals for real

Abstract

Purpose

To highlight and explore the reasons behind bad practice in mentoring among law firms, and to suggest how this can be rectified.

Design

The article is based on extensive research into mentoring programs in legal firms, which is benchmarked against my leading research into mentoring best practice.

Findings

Ineffective mentoring in the legal profession is evident due to lack of clarity of purpose, a lack of understanding of mentoring as a development process, ineffective mentoring dialogue and low emotional intelligence amongst many workers in the industry. All of these barriers need to be overcome for firms to see the real benefits of mentoring.

Practical implications

The article suggests key areas in which legal firms must effect change in order for mentoring to have a real effect on development and bring a host of related benefits.

Originality/value

The article will be of value to those in the legal profession who wish to develop their employees/themselves through effective mentoring. It is also a little‐explored area of mentoring study.

Citation

Clutterbuck, D. (2005), "Mentoring and the legal profession: Developing professionals for real", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 10-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777280510572130