The start of a young lawyer’s career is like building a home without a blueprint. Young lawyers have the researching, writing and analytical tools to construct a legal career, yet lack a blueprint showing how to build it. In other words, law school teaches young lawyers how to succeed in practice, but it is up to us to learn how to be lawyers. Given that reality, young lawyers should avoid speculating about what their career blueprint should look like, and instead, seek guidance from mentors to develop it.

Just as executing a blueprint requires the expertise of a plumber, an electrician and an engineer, a young lawyer should enlist the expertise of several professional mentors. While some of these mentors may overlap and serve multiple purposes, a young lawyer should seek out the following three mentors to develop a career blueprint.

The Practice Group Mentor