Mentors
Mentors are more senior members of the profession who can give you advice on improving your applications, obtaining work experience and preparing for interviews.
Mentors can also give you practical and ethical advice relating to practise, but they cannot give you mini-pupillages or pupillage offers. A mentoring relationship has traditionally been one where a more experienced person passes on their knowledge to a less experienced person; however, there are also mentoring relationships which are peer-to-peer, or reverse mentoring, which are hugely valuable.
You can apply to your Inn for a mentor. The point at which you apply varies depending on the Inn but generally the schemes are open to students on the Bar Course.
In addition, there are other organisations which provide mentoring opportunities to students and junior members of the profession such as Young Legal Aid Lawyers and Women in Criminal Law, as well as the Bar Council itself.
A mentoring relationship can be a very rich source of practical and moral support, giving the mentee the space to explore what they want and need from their professional life in the immediate or longer term future. It is a collaboration between both parties, and it is important that both people take the time to ensure that goals and approaches to mentoring are clear from the outset. Anyone seeking a mentor should consider what they want and need and feel that they have the agency to be clear about this, and understand that they may not meet the ‘perfect’ mentor at the outset; it is both acceptable and important to everyone’s enjoyment of the relationship to keep searching until the right fit is found.
