The Young Lawyers Division of the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA) offers a mentoring program for law students. The purpose of the program is to establish a mentoring relationship between volunteer attorneys and law students at the five law schools in North Carolina.  By providing students with contact with lawyers and judges, the program will give students the opportunity to address issues of current concern to the profession and to learn what they need to know to practice law which they may not learn in the academic setting.  The program provides law students with exposure to practicing attorneys and judges to better assure that, as graduates, they will be equipped to deal with the realities of the practice of law and to understand ethics and professionalism more fully.

The NCBA will receive applications from students who are interested in being matched with a mentor and from North Carolina attorneys willing to serve as mentors.  The Young Lawyers Division’s Law School Activities Subcommittee will then match the students with the attorneys and coordinate the overall program.

Mentors and students are free to structure their relationship to meet the needs of both parties.  The hope is that the students and their mentors may meet occasionally and speak by phone, in order to give that student the type of perspective on the practice of law that might not be learned in law school.  In the final analysis, however, it is the quality of the relationship, not the quantity of time spent, that determines the success of the mentoring relationship.  Questions about how firms operate, expectations of young associates, quality of life, balancing the needs of family with career, and other more informal questions are likely to form the basis of the typical mentoring relations; however, each relationship will necessarily develop in accordance with the interests of the parties.  While the mentor may be asked to offer guidance as to the locations and types of practices a student may be considering, the Mentoring Program is not meant to serve recruitment or placement needs and neither the attorney nor the student should enter the relationship with that goal.

The mentoring program is designed to benefit both the student and the attorney.  With the informal advice of a mentor, students will hopefully enter the working world a bit more knowledgeable about what it means to practice law in North Carolina.  The lawyer will gain an enjoyable opportunity to get involved in NCBA activities, find out what is happening at the law schools, and give a little back to the community.

If you are a student interested in having a mentor, please complete the Law Student/Mentee application.  If you are an attorney willing to serve as a mentor, please complete the Lawyer/Mentor Volunteer application.  If you have questions regarding the mentoring program, you may review the Mentoring Program Guidelines or contact Jacquelyn Terrell-Fountain at jterrell@ncbar.org or 800-662-7407 or (919) 677-0561.