Guided Career Growth: The Power of Mentoring for Early Career Trade Mark Paralegals
Starting your journey as a trade mark paralegal or administrator is an exciting time. The role is dynamic, intellectually challenging, and can develop in many directions. From getting to grips with the pace of work to developing your expertise through training and qualifications, there’s a lot to learn.
Right now, the technology systems companies use to manage IP rights and support core processes are undergoing rapid change, giving paralegals a prominent role in delivering business efficiency and productivity. Joining the profession at this critical moment offers an abundance of opportunity to shape not just your own future, but that of the industry itself.
As you embark on your career, you wouldn’t be human if the role doesn’t seem equal parts exciting and daunting. Finding a mentor to help you navigate these early stages is a great way to benefit from the experience you have yet to gain.
How a mentor can help you build your career
There are several important roles a mentor can play for an aspiring paralegal professional:
Providing a shortcut to insight
A mentor applies their knowledge and experience to your early-career challenges. Whether you need advice on choosing and studying for professional qualifications, tips on workload management, or guidance on pursuing a promotion or a change in direction, a good mentor will be able to advise. A really strong mentor will ask the right questions so you can work out the answers yourself.
Helping you define your strengths:
When you start your career, it can be easy to fall into a trap of believing that inexperience equals inability, but that is far from the case. A mentor will help you identify the strengths that you should bring to the fore in your work. Examples might include communication, an eye for detail, or process analysis, which are strongly transferable to the paralegal world. Similarly, if there are areas where you might benefit from additional training or coaching, a mentor can help you build a development plan.
Personal development pathway planning:
In a busy workplace where you are subject to others’ deadlines and priorities, it can be hard to set personal goals and timeframes for achieving them. A mentor will help you step back to identify what you want to achieve and by when, and provide ideas on the right pathway to follow. Experienced paralegal and INTA in-house practitioner committee member Samantha Hands advises: “It’s important to focus on the next step, as well as the big picture. This might involve undertaking less exciting work that, while not as stimulating as getting involved in big cases, really lays the foundations for future success.”
Offering support during setbacks:
Handling adversity is part of every career. It helps build resilience and resourcefulness and is usually – albeit uncomfortably – a growth experience. Nevertheless, facing difficulties is easier if you can call on someone who is fully in your corner to offer an objective assessment of the situation. A mentor can take the emotion out of the issue and help you decide how best to respond when things don’t go smoothly. When they know you well, they can also spot when stress has reached unhealthy levels and recommend strategies for defusing it.
Sam believes the right kind of mentor feedback is invaluable, saying: “The best mentors have known when to hand-hold and when to challenge me. Sometimes you need a sympathetic ear, but sometimes you need to be thrown in and pushed out of your comfort zone. Eventually you learn this for yourself, but you can’t know how to tackle everything without experience.”
Creating connections:
Mentors are usually generous with the networks they have built during their career. If there is an issue they can’t help with, they often know someone who can, and are happy to make an introduction.
Being a sounding board:
Having a mentor give you someone to sound out ideas with, reflect on your progress, and plan the road ahead. Regular meetings with a mentor put structure around how you manage your career and help maintain focus when you are being pulled in many directions.
Building a mentoring relationship
Every mentoring relationship is different because it is contingent on the personalities involved. Before you identify a mentor, you need to conduct an exercise in self-awareness, to understand what will work for you. Ask yourself:
Do you want a mirror or a contrast? Do you work better with people who are like you, who can empathise with your personality and preferred work style, or would you gain more from someone who brings a contrasting approach?
What frequency works best for you? How often do you anticipate working with a mentor? This helps prospective mentors understand the level of engagement you are looking for.
Do you need a specialist mentor? If you already have an idea of the direction you’d like to take your career, looking for someone who has already travelled that path makes sense.
Do you seek shared values and life experiences?Some mentees are more comfortable with a mentor from a similar life experience background to themselves. Others prefer a different perspective – this is down to personal preference.
Arming yourself with the answers to these questions helps you refine your approach to seeking a mentor.
Once you have your mentor, make the most of the relationship and respect what you’re being offered. Sam advises: “Simple things like making sure you are on time for meetings and that you’ve completed any pre-meeting tasks in good time to a high standard show your mentor that you are investing in the relationship.”
How to find a mentor
Many mentoring relationships start informally, but if you don’t already have connections in the industry, you can explore possibilities including:
Workplace mentoring: Larger organisations often have formal workplace mentoring and career development programmes in place, such as these examples from Alt Legal, Kilburn & Strode, Harbottle & Lewis, and Keystone Law. Even when these aren’t established, companies with a strong wellbeing culture typically nurture informal mentoring.
Industry mentoring: Your career is likely to develop in different companies; therefore it can be more practical to work with a mentor who isn’t tied to a specific workplace. The Careers in Ideas mentoring hub from IP Inclusive connects mentors and mentees. The Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys (CITMA) offers routes to network with other paralegals and discover potential mentors.
A mentor doesn’t need to be the most senior person you know, such as a law firm partner, says Sam: “You can learn a huge amount from someone who is just a few years ahead of you, and their experience may resonate more powerfully with you.”
Even if you don’t have a formal mentoring relationship in place, it is important to take every opportunity to learn from more experienced colleagues and connections. The right conversation at the right time can spark ideas or direction changes, as long as you keep an open mind. Many of the IP paralegals who work for WebTMS came our way through industry connections and conversations – and are building fascinating careers in IP tech as a result!
Thank you, Samantha Hands, for contributing your insights and experience to this blog post!