May I join the Dean in welcoming you to the alumni newsletter and hopefully also to the brand new alumni website on which we invite you to register.
With training contracts and pupillages, and hence ultimately legal jobs, these days being awarded increasingly to those who have served an internship or mini pupilage with the same law firm or chambers, our students are being obliged at a relatively early stage to make choices which may affect their future career.
As Careers Director I am therefore also hoping you that you, alongside a number of alumni who have already committed in advance to do so, will consent to be a student mentor, a role which a number of you already undertake through the auspices of the Sir TL Yang Society, but which we are now expanding to cover all students in the Faculty of Law.
The object of the programme is simply, through the secure links of the alumni website’s e-mentoring page, to try to match the career ambitions of the students as closely as possible with the practice and experience of our alumni to enable mentor-mentee relationships to be developed. Through this relationship a measure of support can then be provided in helping students to understand the legal market, to see how best to deploy their talents towards their future career and in appreciating what “professionalism” entails.
The programme operates only as means of introduction: once contact has been made then mentor and mentee are free to communicate in whatever manner they choose. It is designed to give participants full control not only over the extent and means of communication but also over what information they wish to provide, over whether or not they will accept a particular mentee and in the number of mentees they will take at any one time: anonymity is also preserved until a mentee is accepted.
So I encourage you please, including those who have already pledged their support or already participate in law student mentoring through the Sir TL Yang Society, to register with the website today and follow the link to the e-mentoring page in order to provide the necessary information to make yourself available to our students in the role of mentor, thereby providing the help and guidance that many of them so badly need.
I hope to have the opportunity to meet with as many of you as possible over the coming months and thank you in advance for your support.
Best Wishes
Paul Mitchard QC
Faculty of Law Careers Director