Mini Me
Should the apple fall further from the tree?
One of the fundamental ways lawyers are trained from energetic but callow conscripts to mature, fully developed professionals is through the use of the apprenticeship model. Lawyers are developed not simply through abstract intellectual study, but also (in fact predominantly) by repeated exposure to more senior professionals who spend some of their available energy to show the youngster the ropes.
Such is the importance of this mentor relationship, that the developmental prospects of a young attorney can vary wildly depending on the quality and quantity of guidance they receive from the more experienced generation. Like children, new lawyers need constant love and guidance otherwise they will stunt and stray.
If this is accepted, the future health of the profession, and therefore (very arguably) the future stability of society, depends heavily on the continuing effort of those already established to pass on their wisdom and experience.
Of course, it is therefore problematic when senior lawyers fail to do this. In doing so they elect to absolve themselves of an important responsibility to the future of law. But even when senior practitioners do take the time to train their team, there is another, more subtle, but just as pernicious problem – the problem of your children turning out just like you, and the consequential deleterious impact on future professional diversity.
It’s just human nature – you are more likely to spend the necessary time and energy with someone who you see as a ‘younger version of yourself’, and so, by subconsciously preferring this hypothetical younger lawyer, that’s how you encourage younger lawyers to act. In order to please you, win your attention, praise, encouragement and genuine guidance, they may find themselves emphasising certain aspects of their personalities which align with yours, and suppressing other aspects which are discordant.
Over time, this leads to the creation of a generation of ‘mini-me’ lawyers, who have won the necessary investment from the senior lawyers due to their pervasive mirroring behaviour.
You might think you are immune from this trap of human nature, but it catches us all unless we are alive to it. To take a few trivial examples: You are a morning person. You arrive at the office at 7.30am. You have two younger attorneys in your charge. One mirrors your routine and arrives early, the other is a night owl who comes in later but works later too. Both are equally talented and conscientious. Yet it is the early riser who you will have privileged chats to first thing in the quiet of the morning, and it is the early riser who will hog the majority of your limited energy for development. The night owl, simply by virtue of a variant circadian cycle (over which they have no control), is denied opportunities, and faces a stark choice: adapt, find a new, and compatible supervisor, or go into terminal professional decline.
To take another example. You love the opera. You have two lawyers, younger lawyers, one who loves opera too, and one who thinks it’s a silly waste of time. You can see where this is going. Naturally, completely naturally, you are going to subconsciously preference spending time with the youngster who shares your interests, and develop a stronger working relationship with them. The philistine who sees little joy in watching (to them) melodramatic singing while wearing on uncomfortable tuxedo is going to miss out on hundreds of small teaching moments tacked on the end of passionate Opera-fan discussions, which really do add up, and puts them, over the medium term, and a significant cumulative training disadvantage.
Yet this is what happens when we take the path of least resistance, and don’t think too hard about the training we are passing on, and to whom it is passed. By mindlessly gravitating to those perceive to be just like us, we send a clear message: conform to me, or wither. Of course it’s not an express message, and we certainly don’t consciously intend to convey anything that callous, but it is inevitable result of when we allow mentoring to be based on instinct, rather than rigour. If you don’t track it, it’s very easy you spend a warped and unbalanced amount of time with people who are easy to hang out with, at the expense of those others, no less talented or deserving, who don’t share your idiosyncrasies.
Therefore, if we want to encourage the next generation of lawyers to be more diverse, not only in biological terms, but also in terms of attitudes, interests and life experience, we need to be collectively hyper-vigilant to this understandable, but homogeneity-perpetuating way in which the apprenticeship model can disfunction.
About the author
Samuel J Woff is a leading commercial construction law and construction litigation specialist, advising on complex and high-stakes project and major infrastructure disputes.
Prior to launching his solo (but national) consulting practice, Samuel had more than ten years experience working in private practice at some of Australia’s largest law firms.
Copyright 2023 Samuel J Woff
