Mentoring
The Future of the Profession

March 27–29, 2008

Conference Home Registration Form				Keynote Speaker				Brochure (PDF)

The Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough Center on Professionalism hosted a national conference on Mentoring: The Future of the Profession in late March, 2008. The American Inns of Court, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, and the South Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on the Profession were cosponsors. The conference focus was established by a distinguished group of speakers, Roberta Ramo, former ABA president, Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Deanell Tacha, Jim Stuckey, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism, and Professor Kathy Kram of Boston University, a leading expert on mentoring. Their message was: the profession has an enduring obligation to develop the professionalism of new lawyers and mentoring, done right , can promote that goal.

Attendees from about 20 states included appellate and trial judges, bar officials, members of state professionalism commissions, law firm representatives and academic administrators. In addition to presentations about the elements of effective mentoring, representatives from Georgia and Ohio, two states with the most experience with mandatory mentoring programs for new lawyers, discussed how their programs were established, their design and common problems. There was also an important discussion of how law schools could adopt mentoring for students.

The conference also focused on sharing ideas about assessment, program design and commonly encountered problems, marketing bar programs to the profession, how bar and law firm mentoring can be linked, and the role of law schools in supporting broader mentoring for law students and new lawyers.

The Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough Center on Professionalism is creating a follow up mechanism so that conference participants and anyone with interest in mentoring for new lawyers can continue sharing information and working on best practices and the design of effective mentoring programs.

From oral and written follow-up evaluations, this conference was a tremendous success. Because of your support, the Center is well on its way of achieving its goal of becoming the national resource for professionalism.

SPONSORED BY

The Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough
Center on Professionalism
University of South Carolina
School of Law
Columbia, South Carolina

CO-SPONSORED BY

The American Inns of Court

The South Carolina Chief Justice's Commission on the Profession

ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism