Word to the Wise- Making the Most of the TAS Mentoring Portal

ADVOCACY MATTERS
The Advocates’ Society
SPRING 2023

MENTORING
Word to the Wise: Making
the Most of the TAS
Mentoring Portal
• Tell me about your workplace. How many
people are you working with? Who do you
work most closely with? Do you have an
assigned or informal mentor at your firm?
If so, how is that relationship working for
you?
• Are you wrestling with an acute issue now
that needs priority attention?
• What are you looking for in a mentor?
• Who do you currently turn to for guidance?
What do you value most about the
guidance you receive from that person?
• Where do you see yourself and your practice
in five years?
• What’s your definition of success?
• What are your top priorities right now?
• What do you see as the primary obstacles
to achieving your goals? What have you
tried so far to overcome those obstacles?
What worked? What didn’t work? Why?
How can TAS members participate in the
new TAS Mentoring Program?
The new mentoring program was launched in
January 2023 and is open to all TAS members
to participate as mentors or mentees. TAS
Junior Members are automatically signed up
for the new Mentoring portal and can set up
their accounts by going here.
Members 5+ years of call interested in
being a mentee in the program can register
here.
TAS members 10+ years of call are welcome
and encouraged to sign up to be a mentor.
Simply go to your member profile to opt in as
a mentor or email membership@advocates.
ca and TAS staff will sign you up.
Our approach to mentoring changed over the course of the pandemic with the switch to
remote work. We can no longer rely on casual office pop-ins, chance encounters at the
coffee machine, or walks back to the office from court as the prompt and pretext for daily
mentoring. Instead, we need to be more deliberate about creating and nurturing these relationships.
Further, with the proliferation of virtual communications, mentees are no longer
bound by geography or by the confines of their own workplaces, and suddenly have a much
bigger pool of potential mentors to learn from.
Against this backdrop, The Advocates’ Society has reinvigorated its Mentoring Portal with
a view to fostering mentoring relationships among advocates across Canada. The Mentoring
Portal connects advocates for discrete or continuing mentoring sessions in a way that
provides scores of mentoring sources for mentees without overloading individual mentors.
To make the most out of the precious time you carve out for mentoring, it’s a good idea
to come to sessions equipped with conversation prompts designed to spark meaningful discussions.
Here are some effective prompts specifically tailored for mentors using the TAS
Mentoring Portal:
• Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What drew you to law?
• Tell me about your practice. How would you describe your advocacy style?
• What do you like best about your practice? What’s the best part of a typical day at work
for you? What are the biggest challenges you face in practice? Are you dealing with any
chronic irritations that keep you from enjoying your work?
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