The Middle Temple Mentoring Scheme
About the Scheme
The Middle Temple Mentoring Scheme is designed to provide timely, focussed, and structured support to allow Hall members to achieve a specific project or goal. For instance, Hall members may wish to cultivate a new practice area, move chambers, switch from the employed Bar to the independent Bar or vice versa, return to the Bar, or apply for judicial or other positions. Any opportunity will present its own unique set of challenges.
We aim to match mentees to suitable mentors who have the necessary skills and experience to assist the mentee in reaching their identified goal. One of the main aims of the scheme is to promote social mobility and to ensure that the Bar retains its best people and assists them in returning to the Bar when they have had to leave for whatever reason.
What is required from Mentees?
Mentees will be asked to summarise what they hope to achieve out of mentoring. Typically, this will be a goal or career opportunity. Mentees will be expected to provide an estimate of a timeframe within which they hope to achieve their identified goal. The scheme will seek to facilitate the mentoring relationship and to match mentees to mentors who have availability in the identified timeframe.
The mentoring scheme is open to any member of the Inn from any background at any stage of their career, from completion of pupillage or in house training as an employed barrister through to retirement. Please note that the scheme is not open to student members (who may want to investigate the Inn's Link Scheme).
What is required from Mentors?
Middle Temple wants to attract and retain members from non-traditional backgrounds in particular. Mentoring may make a material difference to achieving this goal. Mentors’ invaluable experience and skills can be a powerful force in shaping the modern Bar, unlocking talent for mentees, helping members to achieve their goals and to thrive.
The mentoring scheme is designed to be focussed, project-specific, and time-specific. Whilst the mentoring relationship is not a friendship (of course, it may develop into that), it is an important and rewarding role that need not be unending or consume too much time. As we are all learning, relationships can be forged and maintained in a host of ways: email, telephone, Zoom and video-conferencing (and, perhaps in the future, in person!). The period of mentoring will initially be based on the timeframe set out in the mentee’s application, and can be extended at the mentor’s discretion until the project is complete.
How to apply
To apply either to be a mentor or to become a mentee, please download and complete an application form and send to mentoring@middletemple.org.uk