by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Everybody needs a little help when they first start out with a new career.
For some careers like shipbuilding, auto repair or plumbing, rookies usually have to go though an intensive apprenticeship period and medical school graduates have to go through years of residency and internships under supervision before they can go out on their own.
So what do young lawyers do?
After receiving a bar license number, a new attorney can seemingly hang out their shingle and get to work. Though law schools have numerous mock trial and law review programs that prepare students for real life experience, there is a lot of practical information that isn’t included in all of the required reading law students go through.
Luckily for green attorneys in Jacksonville the Fourth Judicial Circuit’s Professionalism Committee and the Jacksonville Bar Association came together to form the Mentor Program.
“So much of what we do is learned by watching someone else,” said Stacy Watson-May, chair of the Mentor Program and an attorney at Holland & Knight. “Mentorship is good for learning what isn’t in rule books and textbooks.”
Founded in 1999, the program was created to provide new attorneys within the Fourth Judicial Circuit and the JBA an opportunity to heighten their degree of civility, professionalism and confidence by being paired with a more experienced counselor.
So far Watson-May said the program has produced about about 50 mentor-mentee relationships. Watson-May said the program is important because there are some areas of practice like knowing how to prepare orders or knowing when it is not appropriate to call a judge’s chambers that a young lawyer would have to learn the hard way unless they have someone experienced to guide them properly.
“Until you have been in a courtroom, you don’t fully appreciate that kind of advice,” she said.
To be a mentor, Watson-May said applicants must have at least seven years of legal practice under their belt with at least four years served in the fourth district. Though they don’t have to be affiliated with the Jacksonville Bar, applicants must be in good standing with the Florida Bar and have had no disciplinary actions in the past 10 years.
For more information about the Mentor Program, call the JBA’s office at 399-4486.