In Law360, Paulita Pike Shares Her Perspectives on Mentoring

Law360 featured a Q&A with Chicago Managing Partner Paulita Pike about mentoring the next generation of attorneys.

International Women’s Day is March 8^th but Paulita believes, “every day is women's day. Every day is a day that my colleagues and I mentor young attorneys. Some of them are women, and they have specific questions or concerns or hesitations, and so you mentor them through that. Others are diverse attorneys who may have particular concerns or areas of development that they want to explore. One of the responsibilities that we all share is the mentoring of our associates and young colleagues. It just so happens that a lot of them are women.”

When asked to share tips about effective mentoring, Paulita said, “I think the most important thing is to get to know the people that you're mentoring, because everyone comes to their job with different aspirations, different hopes, different strengths. I think it's important to get to know your mentee not just professionally but personally, because I think mentoring may not be about how to become a partner at a law firm. Mentoring may be about figuring out the next career move; not everybody wants to become a partner. So it can be hard to help somebody if you don't really know what they want. Some may not know what they want, and part of the mentoring is exploring with them and just talking about it.”