My vow to be a better mentor:

Our small office hires 4 law clerks every year. They work for us full-time during the summer and part-time during their following school year. We accept applications in the spring from first-year and second-year law school students. If we hire a person in their first year in law school, that person is welcome to stay with us for two years (the summer before/during their second year, and the summer before/during their third year), or they can just stay w/ us one year and then look for something else to do the next year if they want to change experiences.

I've worked at my place of employment for 4 years. I'd say that my first year here, I got along well with our law clerks, but I didn't ask them to do much for me, b/c frankly I was still in the learning/transitioning process myself and felt a need to just get comfortable with my job, and with my knowledge of the cases that the people I work with in my office typically work on. Basically I didn't feel like I was in a position to delegate and supervise work, not that first year.

My second and third years here, I was much more involved with our law clerks. I was more comfortable with my own knowledge of what we do (most importantly of what I was doing) and of what was going on in all our cases (that I was a part of) and basically felt more comfortable giving assignments and supervising a clerk's work. I discovered that I really liked it; not in a heady/authoritative way, but in a way of becoming the type of clerk supervisor who is easy to talk to, tries to be helpful and to explain things when clerks have questions about how to go about doing something, likes to be able to introduce them to new things/new areas of law/new cases/new types of things to do in a law practice and have them be able to get that experience, and also generally taking an interest in our clerks and happy to share with them my thoughts on practicing law in general, in comparing my own different experiences in the different legal work environments I've been a part of (I've clerked for a judge, I've worked at a big firm, one of the top 4 in my state, as an associate attorney on the partnership track doing litigation, mostly defense work, and I've worked in this small office where I am now, still doing litigation but in a much more relaxed setting with lesser working hours/demands compared to the big firm), and I've been open to giving advice (or at least sharing my thoughts, if not actually giving advice) to them whenever they expressed an interest in talking to me about, well, whatever they wanted to talk to me about. (I also may or may not have developed a crush on one of the clerks we had during that 2-year time period, who ended up becoming one of my best friends and longest-running-blog-reader ... love ya babe.) And I've been an advocate in our office for planning social/after-work events where we could all get together and invite our clerks and have cocktails and what have you ... I even hosted one office party for our law clerks (inviting present and past clerks) at my own house, and I stocked pretty good beer for it and had pretty decent snacks at it, if I do say so myself.

But this past year, when we've had 4 brand new clerks, I've not really spent much time or energy or thought on any of them. And unlike what may have once been jokingly (I think) suggested by a certain (former law clerk) person, it's not because I'm not crushing on any of them; it's because of a combination of factors, primarily that (a) I've been busy as hell this past year, to the point that it actually has seemed like it would always be easier for me to do something myself rather than give some particular task to a law clerk to do, have to explain and supervise the task, and then not know how good the results would be and how much it would help; (b) in line with that first factor, I've not felt like I've had time, when I've been busy (which has been most of the time) this past year to sit and chat in general or, work-wise, take the time to explain what's going on in a particular case or what have you to give the clerk enough background info to prepare them to be able to do an assignment for one of my cases, given that all our clerks were new this past year; (c) I've been feeling kind of burnt-out, bitter, over it if you will, as far as taking an interest in people I work with this past year; and (d) none of our clerks this past year were very interesting overall, not much personality, and unlike certain past clerks (ahem) didn't give off a vibe like they were interested in me ... I mean, weren't pro-active, never came to me to chat/ask questions/ask for advice/ask for assignments, whatever.

But, now that we're in the process of interviewing to hire 4 brand new clerks (all 4 from this past year are leaving, I'm not upset by that one bit), I'm getting excited again about the prospect of getting fresh, eager (ok, if not eager then at least not jaded/bitter/worn, like the faces of the attorneys in our office) new faces in the office, hoping they'll be interesting and add some much-needed personality to our office, and looking forward to the idea of taking an interest again, in who they are and in giving them good assignments and in taking them to trials and depositions and stuff, to give them experience and hope that they will enjoy it and feel like they've learned something by working with us. And looking forward to more social events too, the "welcome new clerks" party this spring, the "get to know the law clerks" lunches and after-work-happy-hours during the summer, the "celebrating the end of the summer" party, the "sneaking a boob and ass grab when no one else is looking" christmas party (oh, wait, make that just the christmas party). I guess if they don't seem to want my mentoring or don't seem friendly/talkative/whatever then I'll get over this feeling pretty quickly, but I'm hoping they'll be good; I'm hoping, basically, primarily, that they will add something to the office that makes my workdays a little bit brighter once again. And if they'll do that for me, then I'll be a good mentor for them, I promise.

And if one of them happens to be a cute guy who decides to start flirting with me, well hey, that would be good too.