The Law Society: Women in Leadership Mentoring Programme

The Law Society of Ireland has announced that is now accepting applications for the Women in Leadership Mentoring programme for 2021/22.

The Women in Leadership Mentoring Programme aims to support women who have been qualified for a minimum of five years who wish to advance their careers to a senior level.

Applications for the 2021/22 Women in Leadership Programme are now available online.

Women in Leadership Mentoring Programme

Mentoring partners generally commit to meeting once a month for around an hour over the course of 8 months.
The mentor panel is made up of senior solicitors (female and male) from the public and private sector. The Law Society welcome applications from solicitors from all sectors of the profession and all parts of the country.
For the 2021/22 programme, The Law Society welcome applications from solicitors who are members of the Law Society and have been qualified for a minimum of 5 years on or before 31 December 2021.

Training

The training is in two parts. Part 1 is a self-paced eLearning course that will take participants approximately 90 minutes to complete. The course covers an introduction to mentoring in a professional setting, an exploration of how you can successfully build the foundations of a strong mentoring relationship and an outline of the key skills required in the role. There are interactive activities to complete (including scenario-based questions) and useful resources that can be downloaded. The course must be completed prior to Part 2 of the training.

Part 2 of the training is attendance at a follow-up one-hour Zoom session where The Law Society will look at the structure and key elements of the Law Society’s Women in Leadership mentoring programme and allow time for any questions participants may have about the process. The dates for the online zoom sessions in 2021 are as follows:

Mentees choose either 7 or 9 September 2021 and new Mentors choose between 14 and 16 September 2021.

Following the online zoom training, participants will be matched with a suitable mentoring partner (if available).

Timelines for 2021/22 Programme

May 2021: Applications for both mentees and new mentors opened for the 2021/2022 programme.
June 2021: The closing date for applications is Friday 25 June.
July 2021: Matching takes place during the month of July.
August 2021: Applicants (mentors and mentees) are informed via email if they have been successfully matched. Where a match has been secured, applicants will be contacted with access details to the Law Society Finuas Skillnet mentor and mentee self-paced online courses. This course must be completed in advance of the one-hour zoom meets virtual training session in September.
September 2021: One-hour virtual zoom meets follow-up training in best-practice mentoring techniques session. All online learning via self-paced courses and virtual zoom meets session are eligible for CPD hours.
September 2021: Following successful completion of training, applicants are informed of the match details.
October 2021: The Mentoring relationship begins.
May 2022: The Mentoring relationship comes to an end.