BarTalk August 2001
Volume 13, Number 4

Another Successful Year

by Christine Mingie

The Mentor Program, which matches BC law students with Lower Mainland and Victoria lawyers, was enormously successful again this year. More than 400 students and lawyers were matched according to their mutual legal interests, and met over coffee, lunch or at the Mentor reception to talk about the law, their law school experience, careers and the legal profession.

Mentors help students build important networks within the legal community. They can also serve as valuable career advisors for students and are able to advise students on developing areas of the law, recruitment and articling experiences and to answer questions about the legal profession.

The goal of the Mentor Program is to ensure that BC law students have an opportunity to meet with members of the legal profession who practice in the student’s preferred area of interest. This year, more than 30 practice groups were represented, a record number for the program.

The Mentor Program at UBC is generously sponsored by the CBABC and the Articling Committee at the Faculty of Law at UBC. This year Lang Michener also supported the program.

The Mentor Program began again in August this year. Practicing lawyers who sign up to mentor students are matched in late September with UBC law students. Once matched, students contact their mentor to arrange a first meeting. Later in the fall, the CBABC and the UBC Articling Committee invite mentors and students to the annual Mentor Reception to thank them for participating. This year the reception is being held on the evening of October 18, 2001 at Cecil Green House on the campus of UBC.

The Articling Committee at UBC and the CBABC invite lawyers in all areas of practice to join us again to mentor the next generation of young lawyers. To last year’s mentors, your generosity and support to law students and the CBABC was appreciated. To future mentors, law students at UBC look forward to meeting you in September.

Would you like to be a mentor?
To mentor a law student this year, please complete and return the mentor insert in this BarTalk or contact Christine Mingie at Lang Michener by email at cmingie@lmls.com or by telephone at 604.689.9111. After August 24, 2001, please contact Christine at the UBC Faculty of Law Articling Committee by email at cjmingie@interchange.ubc.ca.

In Victoria, please contact Tim Livingston at the University of Victoria by email at taliving@uvic.ca or call 250.370.1176.

Christine Mingie is a summer student at Lang Michener and a CBA representative on the Articling Committee, Faculty of Law, UBC.

This article was published in the August 2001 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2005, all rights reserved.