A Judicial Officer Mentorship Program relies on experienced judges to give valuable guidance and feedback to potential judicial candidates, helping them assess their suitability for the bench, develop career plans, and develop skills to improve their opportunities to become judicial officers. The mentoring program provided below is only one model and courts are encouraged to create more customized programs that are best suited for local needs, partnerships, and resources.
To ensure an inclusive group of participants, courts should encourage lawyers from underrepresented groups or communities to be involved in the mentoring program. This includes outreach not only to local bars but to specialty bars and attorneys with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds; attorneys with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) attorneys; and attorneys who regularly serve these communities.
A successful mentoring program must have the support of court leadership, and court diversity committees can also play an important role. Diversity committees can meet with the presiding judge, assistant presiding judge, and court executive officer to discuss the program and to resolve any concerns, such as cost, time commitment, fairness, conflicts of interest, publicity, geographical challenges, and outreach. However, the committees’ role should be to assist the Judicial Officer Mentorship Program committee with administration and outreach.
Mentoring programs are often joint efforts between courts and local bar associations. Larger counties often have enough participants to sustain their own program, while smaller counties may need a regional program to recruit enough participants while avoiding disabling conflicts of interest.
While courts alone can create mentoring programs, local bars can help by communicating directly and efficiently with their members, and even provide administrative support for the program.
First, a Judicial Officer Mentorship Program committee must be established with input from county court leadership and/or local bar associations. The following is a sample timeline of the committee’s activities:
At least once a year, launch new round of publicity and reopen the application period.
For Mentors