Get yourself a mentor

As defined by Wikipedia, “…mentoring entails informal communication, usually face to face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé)”.In the legal profession, a mentor is a legal practitioner […]

As defined by Wikipedia, “…mentoring entails informal communication, usually face to face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé)”.
In the legal profession, a mentor is a legal practitioner with attributes and qualities to offer career guidance, advice and assistance in the legal journey of a young wig. The essence of having a mentor relationship is to help the young wig elevate his professional capabilities and access to wealth of knowledge and experience he ordinarily wouldn’t have.  Take for instance, a young wig who in his bid to be creative and innovative, does quite the opposite likely to cost the firm and then gets stuck on what to do next to remedy the issue, a mentor if available would be helpful in finding a possible and ethical route out.
Before going far, a mentor in this context does not include celebrities we like, their ideology or philosophy but can never meet personally or at best, meet once in a life time e.g Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela {God rest his soul} or even Jose Mourihno, meaning, there must be constant communication from time to time between the mentor and the protégé for the transfer of knowledge.
Considering Nigeria to be where the state of things is far from expected, is it possible for a young wig to have a mentor? Is it possible to have a mentor relationship in our legal profession? I say ‘yes’, a mentor relationship is realistic if the young wig takes a viable approach towards achieving same, irrespective of the challenges that come with having one.
A young wig desirous of a mentor should start by setting goals he intends to benefit from the relationship; outline the qualities and attributes he admires in a lawyer and wants to emulate; and understand that the primary purpose of a mentor is NOT to seek financial support but to acquire knowledge and experience.
The choice of a mentor plays a vital role in determining whether the relationship succeeds or not because the mentor must be accessible and also be aware that he is a mentor to the young wig – one cannot be a mentor to a protégé, if he doesn’t know the protégé or communicates with him/her meaning the legal practitioner chosen to be a mentor must be accessible and willing.
I once made a mistake of choosing a renowned lawyer in faraway Lagos as a mentor but when accessibility became a problem, the relationship didn’t start, not to talk of reaching the stage of coming to an end.
A young wig in choosing a mentor should pick an accessible legal practitioner within his jurisdiction that has the qualities he admires and approach the said lawyer, and if there are none within the jurisdiction, maybe the young wig is in the wrong jurisdiction or what he’s looking for is not feasible. At the young lawyers’ annual summit in Abuja, the learned silk, Funke Adekoya {SAN}, while speaking to us on ‘Mentoring, Leadership and Succession in Law Firms’ made us to understand that a principal need not be a mentor to a junior under his employ.
The relationship, means of communication and purpose of the relationship should be clearly defined at the beginning to avoid problems mid way. In other words, ground rules should be set. Communication need not be personal, phone calls, emails et al within a particular time frame would suffice.
A protégé, haven gotten a mentor, should try as much as possible to restrict communication to limits of the relationship, over reaching would not be of any good and may likely cost the relationship. Stay in your lane, don’t expect your mentor to be perfect, he or she is only human and life is a learning process.
A young wig in approaching a lawyer to be his mentor must be direct in stating what he wants, if rejected do not despair, not every lawyer would agree to be a mentor to a young wig. Some would question the practicability of such a concept and what they stand to benefit as mentor, while some would accept to mentor because they want to improve on the younger generation by transferring knowledge from one to the other.
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