But First

I haven’t felt much like posting this week. The news coming out of Israel is heartbreaking, and it’s just hard to put out content when you feel like everyone should be talking about something else. A few things on this. First and foremost, if you have Jewish friends and colleagues, please reach out to them. If you want to learn more about how you can support them, Karen Vladeck, Managing Director at Whistler Partners, posted this on X. I found it quite helpful. Employers who haven’t reached out to your Jewish employees to check on them, shame on you.

Find A Mentor

Most of us—myself included—received career advice at some point to “Find a Mentor.” In some ways I feel like I’ve spent my entire career trying to find a woman lawyer mentor. It’s one of the primary reasons I write this newsletter.

Part of the problem comes from the word “find,” right? If you’re working in a male-dominated profession like the law, it can be extremely difficult to find someone above you at all. Or there may be only one woman and everyone wants that woman to mentor them. Or there may be only one woman and you either don’t like or admire her. (Yes, it’s ok to say this. We don’t like all men we work with; why do we have to like all women?)

“Mentor” is also a loaded word. People tend to picture Obi-Wan Kenobi (“a wise and trusted counselor or teacher”, as dictionary.com defines it)—but what women lawyers need most is not that type of guidance. The second part of the definition of mentor speaks to what women lawyers need the most: “an influential senior sponsor or supporter.”

Successful men have influential senior sponsors or supporters, and they don’t have to “find” them—or even ask for their sponsorship or support. Men supporting men is so engrained into the culture of law firms, government offices, and the C-Suite that its existence is taken for granted. This is what women need.

Sponsorship

When an exciting new case comes in the door, or there’s a new deal that needs to be staffed, or a trial to be assigned, women need people who will think of them for those assignments and, if necessary, throw elbows to make sure those placements happen. And when it comes time to give raises, distribute bonuses, and identify attorneys for promotion, women need people who are both senior and savvy enough to advocate for them. Of course, nearly all of these key decisions happen behind closed doors, so it’s important to find someone who doesn’t stop at taking you to lunch, but who can take the heat in places where sponsorship is less visible.

As someone who took these kinds of positions, I can tell you that it’s hard. You can’t always point out unfairness wherever you see it: in order to be credible you have to pick your battles. When your sponsor tells you that you lost out on an opportunity, you have to trust them that they’ll have your back the next time.

There’s a good example of this type of relationship in a book published by the Harvard Business Review Press called Thriving in a Male-Dominated Workplace. (You can find it here on Amazon for $2.31!) Chapter 5, called Sponsorship is Support, is a conversation between Christina Massa, a partner, and Julia Gonzalez Romero, an associate, who work at a law firm in Mexico City. It highlights several key aspects of a sponsorship relationship:

• Christina chose to sponsor Julia. She wasn’t assigned to her via a firm-sponsored mentorship program or told by a managing partner that she was required to take Julia under her wing.

• Sponsorship—particularly by a woman—is taking a risk. Once Christina made the decision to sponsor Julia, she knew that “Julia’s mistakes are also my mistakes.”

• There are several places in the interview where Julia says that she wasn’t aware that Christina had advocated for her in a particular circumstance. This is the behind-closed-doors point I made above.

• Senior lawyers are incredibly busy; you can’t assume that sponsoring you will be their fulltime job. Christina and Julia note several friction points in their relationship where Julia needed to acknowledge this.

If you think about the differences between a sponsorship relationship like Christina and Julia’s and the traditional mentor-mentee relationship, you can begin to understand why formal mentorship programs within the workplace often don’t work. Few senior lawyers are going to take the risks inherent in a sponsorship on a person assigned to them by their employer. Young women lawyers need senior lawyers to advocate for them, to call out bias and prejudice (explicit or implicit)—and that type of relationship doesn’t tend to flourish when you are required to mentor someone. In addition, sponsorship is fluid. There are times where a sponsor may need to draw a big red line to advocate for a protegee; in other cases, a protegee may need to realize a sponsor can’t always champion a cause.

Implementation

How do you make all of this actionable? Here are a few takeaways.

In an ideal world, identify someone within your workplace who can act as your sponsor. Look for someone who is at the top of the food chain and who is politically savvy. While it might be tempting to pick the office firebrand, that’s probably not the person who will help you most. And, although you would probably like your sponsor to be a woman, in many workplaces that’s just not realistic. A man can absolutely sponsor a woman: you just have to find one who isn’t going to cave to (male) peer pressure when you won’t be able to see it happening.

Once you’ve identified that person, put in the work to earn their sponsorship. Deliver on your end by doing the best possible work. Listen to and, above all, trust their advice. As a younger attorney, you will not see the things that happen above you, and you can’t possibly imagine the shark tank that management can sometimes be. You must be realistic about what a sponsor can and can’t do for you.

If you can’t identify someone in your workplace who fits the above description, that’s probably an indication that you’re not in the right place. Think seriously about what it means that you can’t identify a single senior person who will advocate for you when you’re not watching. If you can’t identify someone because you work in a smaller firm, pick someone who is your co-counsel or even your opposing counsel. (I often admired women on the other side of the v.) While these types of people can’t be in the room when compensation decisions are made at your workplace (and you’ll have to be careful about maintaining firm and matter confidences), champions outside your workplace can absolutely help make the case to your workplace that you have something to offer. I can’t count the number of times I got a plum assignment after my co-counsel told a partner what a great job I’d done on something. Work whatever relationships you have.

Enjoying Comes Now?

If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please share it with others and encourage them to subscribe. Having more subscribers will allow me to do bigger and better things with Comes Now! And if there’s a particular issue that moves you, drop a comment on the website or on my post about an issue on LinkedIn. One of the most important things to me in writing this newsletter is to bring these discussions out into the open so that we’re not ashamed to talk about them. But if you’d rather, send me comments privately at [email protected].