Washington Lawyer March/April 2026
By Jeremy Conrad
“Law school does a great job of teaching you substantive skills, like legal writing and argument, but there isn’t as much opportunity to develop the soft skills of the legal profession,” says Aaron Silva, an associate at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP.
Expanding on the gap between classroom learning and professional life, Silva reflects on the questions that confront new lawyers once they enter the workplace. “What is it like to be a lawyer? How do you interact with colleagues in your office? How do you handle clients? What are the realities of being an associate, a counsel, a partner?” Silva says. “Job experience helps, but mentorship plays a big role in developing these skills.”
Mentorship also can help land a job in the first place. Studies show that at least 70 percent of all job openings are never promoted publicly, and up to 80 percent of positions are filled through networking. Even relatively weak ties can result in job opportunities, making connections with individuals established in the profession an important part of launching a career. This reality encourages individuals, institutions, and organizations to develop new mentorship opportunities or expand upon existing ones so they can achieve mutual success.
Formal mentorship programs demonstrate an investment in employees’ professional development, strengthening a firm’s ability to retain talent. A 2022 Gallup poll indicates that an overwhelming majority of employees with formal mentorships felt that their company had a clear plan for their success.
Activating Alumni Networks
Silva, who was admitted to the D.C. Bar in December 2025, gained mentorship experiences through George Washington University Law School’s recently established program, Law Link.
Launched in 2024, Law Link is an exclusive networking and mentorship platform that helps GW law students start their careers by connecting them with alumni who can offer guidance, referrals, and professional support. “We have an enormous alumni community … we are global and this is a really big law school, so we needed an online platform to be able to really take advantage of that network,” says Suzanne Hard, GW Law associate dean for professional development and career strategy.
“When we look at our outcomes, the data clearly shows that lots and lots of jobs are coming from connections,” and not just from the formal recruiting programs, Hard adds. “Many opportunities come from talking to others, so our students are looking for ways to have connections with members of the legal community.”
The platform saw immediate interest from both students and alumni. “We have grown from about 500 registered users a year ago to about 2,500 now, with a big plan for expansion in [2026] through focused communications in collaboration with our advancement team,” Hard says.
In addition to arranging traditional mentorships, GW’s Law Link has also been effective in creating regional and practice area groups and facilitating what Hard refers to as “flash mentoring” — brief exchanges between students and alumni to discuss discrete topics.
The school continues to explore ways in which Law Link can leverage technology to connect alumni and current students. A recent project by Hard’s office involved matching third-year students with mentors in the community using an algorithm that filters for similar stated interests. After the matching process, the pairs were then guided through a résumé review, an informational interview, a document review, and a mock interview. There was also an experiential learning component in which the mentee could shadow the mentor in person for a day.
As is commonplace with mentorships, some are more active than others. Hard says that one student reported using the platform to set up three coffee dates a week for an entire summer.
Students are not the only beneficiaries. “The platform is valuable not just for the students, but also for the alumni,” Hard says. “They use it to stay connected to the school and to each other. It allows them to share expertise, to get questions answered, and to just connect … We are a social species, and I think that those who choose to take advantage of the opportunity to connect with others are going to do better in life.”
For some, serving as a mentor is a way to repay the guidance they received throughout their own careers. Among the active participants in GW Law’s mentorship program is Robert Monahan, senior legal advisor for the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Monahan served in the Navy JAG Corps for 20 years, attaining the rank of captain and serving as chief judge of the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals from 2020 to 2022.
“I always tell folks that I cannot properly thank the people who mentored me when I was coming up,” Monahan says. “The only way that I can [do so] is to pay it forward and to mentor the next generation of attorneys. I’m now old enough to be the father of law students, and I wanted to up my game, if you will, to assist the next generation of lawyers.”
Mayer Brown LLP partner Bryan Nese can also attest to the value of mentorship and connections. Nese has participated in a wide array of mentorship programs, including GW Law’s Law Link and the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. He cites a variety of reasons for his involvement.
“One reason is to find good people to join our practice at Mayer Brown, specifically for the IP group that I’m a part of,” Nese says. “A big part of our recruitment efforts involves meeting people and seeing if they are the right cultural and personality fit. We want people to come on board who are committed to working hard and being their best, but are also going to treat each other with kindness, respect, and understanding. That should be obvious, but it [can be] hard to find those people.” Former mentees who go on to employment elsewhere help connect Nese to a broader network that can be tapped for references.
The connections Nese has made through his mentorship have also helped him navigate the courtroom. “[I can share] a quick story from a case that I was involved with years ago … We were getting ready to go to trial in this patent case, and we were pretty close to settling,” Nese says. “One fact that really helped us get a resolution was that one of the folks on our team years ago had been a mentor to one of the folks who was in-house [counsel for] our opponent. That kind of relationship and trust was instrumental in getting folks to the table and getting a deal done … that kind of story really motivates me.”
“If you’re treating people well, if you’re trying to send that elevator back down once you’ve gotten where you need to be, I think that comes back to you … You get out what you put into the world,”Nese adds.
Affinity Bar Participation
Outside of law school mentorship programs, new lawyers can also turn to affinity bar associations for support to find their footing. This was the case for Daniel Trujillo Esmeral, a labor and employment attorney.
“At every turn in both my professional and personal life, I’ve had someone who has been there before me — who has been in the position I was in, or in the position where I wanted to be — and I had the opportunity to ask questions and seek out the knowledge I needed,” says Trujillo Esmeral, current president of the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia (HBA-DC).
HBA-DC has a particularly well-developed mentorship program, numbering about a hundred participants annually. Run by the organization’s Student Affairs Committee, the program matches mentors and mentees by aligning information provided by both parties about their background, practice area, and interests, among other factors.
“Oftentimes, we know the personalities,” Trujillo Esmeral says. “We know who [are] going to get along. We know who the extroverts are and who the introverts are. We can be really hands-on in our matchmaking because we have so much deep-seated knowledge within the community.”
The personal elements of matchmaking, as well as members’ shared backgrounds and experiences, help amplify the value of HBA-DC’s mentorship program. “Oftentimes, we are the first in our families to have gone to college, much less law school,” Trujillo Esmeral says, adding that mentoring has given him the opportunity to reflect on his career and carefully consider the things he might have done differently to advise mentees.
Many attorneys find overlap among mentorship participation, community involvement, and leadership. D.C. Bar Board of Governors member Shirley Diaz says she found mentors through the University of California, Irvine School of Law’s Latinx Law Student Association and through HBA-DC, where she previously served as president.
Paying it forward, Diaz, managing attorney at Diaz Vidales PLLC, takes on mentees whenever she is able and participates in virtual events organized by the Huellas Mentorship Program at the University of Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. Run by the school’s Latino Law Student Association, La Voz, Huellas creates “pods” that include a JD holder, a Boyd law student, an undergraduate student, and a high school student for mentoring and support.
“It’s very fulfilling because I feel like everything that I learned along the way wasn’t just for me,” Diaz says. “I think we can all remember a time when we [thought], I wish I had known that this was important to excel at this organization, or that this was important to get into a good law school … information that especially first-generation lawyers can’t get anywhere else.”
Cross-organizational Connections
Another firmly established mentoring program available for attorneys in the Washington, D.C., area is through the Washington Council of Lawyers, a voluntary bar promoting nonprofit and pro bono law and lawyers.
Established 20 years ago, the Washington Council of Lawyers mentorship program initially consisted of monthly large-group programs and training sessions. Since then the program has expanded its reach to include law students, young attorneys, private firm and pro bono practice attorneys, and government and nonprofit participants who are matched by areas of interest and practice for one-on-one mentorships.
“Over the last three years, we’ve done a top-to-bottom retooling of our mentoring program to meet young lawyers where they are,” says Christina Jackson, the organization’s executive director. “We now produce a monthly newsletter in which we provide substantive information such as trainings, CLEs, and practice advisories. We connect them and provide all of the resources that they might need for skill building.”
“A second component involves professional development, helping new attorneys develop a network, connect with a mentor, and participate successfully in a mentorship. The third piece is community building. We want good, strong, experienced, passionate, dedicated social justice warriors,” Jackson adds.
Because members of the Washington Council of Lawyers come from diverse backgrounds, including the public sector, they can offer mentees entry, or at least insight, into the District’s vast and complex public interest landscape. Access to experienced attorneys can help early career lawyers get a broader perspective of the opportunities available in the field. “We have connections across practice areas and sectors and are a part of coalitions and groups across the city,” Jackson says. “Washington Council of Lawyers is the mortar between the bricks, so our mentoring program and other activities are necessarily cross-organizational.”
Because public interest law can be particularly challenging and often comes with greater financial and emotional strains than are common in other kinds of legal work, programming for early career attorneys addresses these issues. “We talk about boundary setting, self-care, getting support from a supervisor, or in the case of first-line or second-line supervisors, how to support their team,” Jackson says.
In addition to virtual trainings and events, service projects, and other in-person activities such as participation in the DC Walk for Justice, the Washington Council of Lawyers also offers a leadership institute for members. Jackson says that early training in leadership is meaningful because, in the public sector, an attorney may become a supervisor just two or three years into their career.
“In the private sector you have more time before you may become a team leader. Our understanding that newer attorneys needed training in this area came out of our mentoring program,” she says.
Mentors also benefit from their involvement in guiding newer attorneys, according to Jackson. “One thing our mentors always say is that it reignites their passion for their work. It reconnects them with the drive they had when they started their careers, which is a beautiful thing because you can be dedicated to that work and still feel some of the fire flickering,” she adds.
D.C. Bar staff writer Jeremy Conrad is an attorney who has spent much of the past decade writing about the legal profession. Previously he practiced in immigration law and criminal defense.
