Reverse mentoring toolkit
LawCare and the University of Leeds have created a reverse mentoring toolkit to help law firms and legal organisations become more inclusive, supportive, and fair places to work.
The reverse mentoring toolkit is available to download now.
What is reverse mentoring?
In reverse mentoring, junior staff or people from underrepresented backgrounds mentor more senior colleagues. It’s a way to share lived experiences, build understanding, and challenge traditional hierarchies. This approach helps organisations listen to voices that are often left out of important conversations.
Why it matters
Progress on improving equality, inclusion and wellbeing has been too slow and junior and aspiring lawyers are often not sufficiently involved. LawCare and the University of Leeds created this toolkit to help address that.
The toolkit gives step-by-step advice for setting up a reverse mentoring programme that is safe, properly considered, and useful - not just a tick-box exercise.
Who is the toolkit for?
This free resource is for any legal workplace - large or small, in any part of the legal sector. Whether you’ve never tried reverse mentoring before or you’re looking to improve what you’re already doing, this toolkit can help.
Download the toolkit
Reverse mentoring in the legal profession - a practical toolkit for kickstarting an inclusive scheme
The toolkit will help you:
- Understand how reverse mentoring works
- Create a safe and respectful space for honest conversations
- Support mentors and mentees through the process
- Learn from real experiences to make lasting changes
- Avoid common mistakes
What's in the toolkit?
Rationale
- What is reverse mentoring? (page 5)
- Who the toolkit is for? (page 6)
- Why do reverse mentoring? (page 7)
- The benefits (page 8)
Preparation
Key steps in setting up your reverse mentoring scheme (page 11 to 13):
- Develop purpose, aims and objectives (8-12 weeks)
- Engage mentors and mentees (3-4 weeks)
- Launch and run the scheme (minimum 10 weeks)
- Reflections and evaluation (3-4 weeks/ongoing)
Determining your purpose and objectives (page 14 to 15).
Delivery
- Getting started (page 17)
- Mentor and mentee roles (page 21)
- Engaging the right people in reverse mentoring (page 26)
- How to match people (page 28)
- Meeting practicalities (page 32)
- Community and network building (page 37)
- Reflection and evaluation (page 39)
- Possible challenges (page 43)
- Top tips for impactful reverse mentoring (page 47)
Supplementary documents
- Purpose and objective planner (page 52)
- Legal profession - a reverse mentoring project : a case study (page 53)
- Project timeline and topics (page 59)
- Closing reflections (page 69)
Extra resources on the University of Leeds project page
The project page includes extra resources to download:
- Reverse mentoring in the legal profession toolkit - Handbook (9 pages, 141 KB. PDF)
- Reverse mentoring in the legal profession toolkit - Reflective diary template (1 page, 74 KB. PDF)
- Reverse mentoring in the legal profession toolkit - Agreement template (2 pages, 109 KB. PDF)
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