A ‘reverse mentoring’ toolkit developed by LawCare and the University of Leeds aims to help law firms and legal organisations become more inclusive, supportive and fair places to work.
The term refers to junior employees or people from under-represented backgrounds mentoring more senior colleagues to share lived experiences and challenge traditional hierarchies.
‘This approach helps organisations listen to voices that are often left out of important conversations’, LawCare and the University of Leeds said.
“Progress on improving equality, inclusion and wellbeing has been too slow and junior and aspiring lawyers are often not sufficiently involved… this toolkit helps to address that.”
The toolkit gives step-by-step advice for setting up a reverse mentoring programme, helping legal employers understand how reverse mentoring works, enable honest conversations, support mentors and mentees and avoid common mistakes.
The free resource is aimed at any legal workplace in any part of the sector and can be downloaded as a PDF.