Mentorship Guaranteed
NEW YORK – Before coming to Weil, I must admit that I only understood mentorship as a buzzword that could be thrown out in desperation to fill time during a stale interview. After just a few months at Weil, I’ve learned two things about mentorship: (1) a mentor can have a huge impact on your career and (2) Weil offers all of its summers and associates amazing formal and informal mentorship opportunities. Mentors advocate for you and commiserate with you.
At Weil, mentorship is formally arranged and informally discovered – although discovered is the wrong word, because you don’t have to go far (or anywhere) to find it. The recruiting team makes sure all summer associates have “summer siblings” – junior associates we can go to with our questions or concerns without worrying that our greenness might impact our professional aspirations. But, since my real siblings would make fun of me for most of what I ask my summer sibling, I prefer to think of my summer sibling as my summer cool-uncle.
Once our rotations are set, each practice group matches us up with assignment coordinators and social coordinators, who play important roles in our daily lives: the assignment coordinators ask us about our interests and then seek out work that matches those interests; the social coordinators plan lunches and coffee breaks with partners so we can learn more about each practice group and forge relationships that can lead to substantive work in our area of interest.
Further mentorship is available through Weil’s many affinity groups, and beyond. In the less formal context, I was able to join the intramural soccer team, which turned out to be a great opportunity for me to meet associates, counsel, and partners who share my love of the game and my interest in an exciting, challenging, and rewarding career at Weil.
The bottom line is if you are wandering through a haze of Early Interview Week jargon simply using mentorship as a hollow buzzword, Weil is the place to learn the word’s true meaning and real value.