Professional mentoring is a training arrangement under which a senior or more experienced individual, the mentor, is assigned to act as an advisor, counsellor, or guide to a junior or trainee recruit, the mentee. Normally, the mentor is responsible for providing support to, and feedback on, the career development of the mentee in his or her charge. Mentoring programs also aim to involve newer bar members while engaging veteran members in training them.
Advocates of mentoring programs have widely argued that new bar members who have been properly exposed to mentorship programs, increased their competitiveness in the job market and have performed better in the workplace. This shows that mentoring is a key ingredient in bridging the gap between the academic side (what a mentee learnt in class) and the practical side (what a mentee would learn in the job market).
Mentoring programs in Tanzania are virtually non-existent especially for persons in the professional service industry. There are no formal or controlled mentoring programs specifically dedicated for junior or trainee recruits in the legal profession, nor does the Government of Tanzania have any general policy framework on youth mentoring in Tanzania.
The benefits of professional mentoring are countless and should not be taken for granted, especially by employers. Good mentoring is a path towards professional success, and can thus lead to promotion, salary increment, job satisfaction and increased job opportunities, both within and outside a mentee’s organization.
Those organizations which have taken within themselves to offer mentoring programs, are usually rewarded with higher levels of employee performance or productivity, retention, job satisfaction and knowledge sharing. However, these organizations are very few in Tanzania.
As a step towards introducing formal mentorship programs, the bar association in Tanzania, that is, the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS), should design a policy framework in which such programs will work across all law firms (through its membership) in Tanzania, and implore on its members, to embrace it.
Ideally, the framework should be designed in a way that recognizes how law firms (through its membership) are organized and set up in Tanzania.
It is recommended that mentoring be based on pairing professional seniority levels within a specific institution. For instance, the mentoring program can pair trainee recruits with more senior lawyers as they progress and advance in their careers. Then, new associates be paired with mid-level associates when they join a firm and maintain this relationship during their second year at the firm as part of the junior associate mentoring program. Mid-level associates can be paired with partners and senior counsels. Likewise, mentors and mentees at a firm should be offered training on goal setting and career action plans in order to help them work together to achieve the mentee's goals for the stated year.
The advantage of having a formal mentoring program in the bar is that, it will ensure mentees receive similar training or at least the same structure or some level of training across its membership, and also undergo, similar development procedures in building their professional careers.
As it currently stands, individual law firm have their own way of training new recruits. This informal system in which a partner takes a new associate under his or her wing, is no longer appealing or relevant, because of the increased business pressures within the profession.
For the bar’s newer members, who graduate in their hundreds each year, a standardized mentoring program is what is needed so as to increase the caliber of young lawyers who are entering the market.
While acknowledging the fact that due to time constraints, finding the right mix of mentors and mentees, and the diverse differences in one law firm to the other, may pose hindrances to mentoring programs, yet still, its benefits, by large outweigh these challenges.
Lastly, mentoring programs can pay dividends not only for the mentee and mentor, but also for the Tanganyika Law Society, towards its function of ensuring that the newer bar members, who currently are the majority of its membership, are well equipped and competently qualified to compete, not only locally, but also in the global stage.
Note: This is not a legal opinion and the contents hereof are not meant to be relied upon by any recipient unless our written consent is sought and explicitly obtained in writing.
