There’s a particular kind of door you only notice once you’ve walked through it. When you turn around to look back and realize that you’re now the expert, the person other people rely on and look to as a role model. No one ever walks through these doors on their own. Someone (often more than one) was always on the other side, holding the handle, saying, “Come on in. Let me show you how this works.”
Mentors open those doors. They do it through a conversation over coffee; a candid story about a mistake made and a lesson kept; a resume marked up with honest red ink; an encouragement, delivered when things turn hard, that you, too, can find your place in this profession.
Mentoring is one of the most powerful tools we have for developing and expanding the profession. It turns aspiration into direction. It transforms potential into performance. It not only opens doors but also guides you down the hallway, giving you the comfort that you are not doing this alone.
This week, we kick off the CSU|Law Alumni Mentor Program for our 1L students. At its heart, the program is simple: our alumni showing up for our students. It reflects what’s best about this law school: we are a family.
For our students, mentors demystify the intangibles of lawyering: how to choose a practice area, how to navigate the transition from law school, how to recover from rejection, and how to build a reputation one relationship at a time. Sometimes the most valuable gift is simply perspective: the reassurance that no one arrives fully formed, and that the people who seem most confident today remember vividly what it felt like to be new.
For our alumni, mentorship is a way to stay close to the school that helped shape their lives. It’s a return to the source and a renewal of it. It’s the hope that someone else can follow your same path with a little more steadiness because you were there.
And mentorship is mutual. Students remind us why this profession matters. Their questions are fresh. Their hopes are unjaded. Their energy is contagious. They make all of us better lawyers, better listeners, better people.
In a field that can appear to prize self-reliance over shared support, mentorship is a corrective. It is a way of sharing the important lesson that no one succeeds alone. We do this together. We rise by reaching back.
We want to thank the many alumni who thought, “I could help someone avoid the hard parts,” and volunteered for this program. And if you’re a student who’s still wondering whether it’s worth it to reach out—whether anyone really has time—let me answer plainly: yes. Our alumni do. Our alumni remember.
That’s why “we are your law school for life.”
With gratitude,
Brian