No Frills No Fluff™

Another example of something a firm can do to implement an effective in-house mentoring program:

Encourage young attorneys to get out from behind their desks and learn. New experiences for associates should be encouraged and being able to shadow a partner at a trial or deposition should be a part of the program. Obviously, these opportunities may not be billable, but firms have devised alternative ways to record this “lost” time. Some create a bank of educational time for each attorney and the non-billable learning time utilized each month is subtracted from the bank. Other firms allow the associates to include the time in their annual billable totals, but the time is cut on the client bills. There are even clients who agree to pay for some of the time if the associate is performing a valuable service, i.e., keeping exhibit lists at trial, taking notes during a deposition, etc.