This article originally appeared in Michigan Lawyers Weekly on October 15th, 2010.
Carlos B. Vicent rests his elbows on the round table in his small but stylish law office in Shelby Township, and explains, “It’s not necessarily that I wanted to go into business for myself.”
But what else was a guy to do?
He graduated in 2009 with his juris doctorate, and in January 2010, earned his LLM from The Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Vicent worked at his full-time job as a financial advisor while in law school, so he couldn’t pursue summer associate positions that might have led to job offers at big law firms. Vicent did his best to network and cultivate his leadership skills while he was in school.
He was the president of the Black Law Students Association at Cooley, and before he graduated, he started taking advantage of every networking opportunity available. Vicent worked at Cooley’s estate planning clinic in order to gain valuable practical experience, and lived by one of his mottos, “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” hoping that his hard work would materialize in the form of a lucrative job offer.
But law firms in this economy are hardly clamoring to hire new law school graduates, he said, so he leased a condominium with an office below, hung up his shingle and got to work.
It’s Vicent, and other new lawyers like him, that Oakland County Bar Association President Jennifer Grieco was thinking of when she came up with the idea to start the OCBA Pro Bono Mentor Program, which will launch later this month.
“There is certainly a need for mentors. I felt like it was pretty dire,” Grieco said.
She found it depressing that there are so many talented new lawyers, but no jobs available for them, she said, adding that the need in the community by people who need legal services, but can’t afford them, is growing.
“The number of folks who are deprived access to justice is huge,” Grieco said. “They don’t have the money to pay a lawyer. They’re losing their houses.”
So pro bono mentorship seemed to be the answer to both problems, she said.
“A lot of us cut our teeth on landlord-tenant cases,” she said. “They’re real litigation matters. They’re fairly simple, and these lawyers have all the skills they need. They just need to be pointed in the right directions, with a little bit of guidance.”
Legal Aid Defenders and the Family Law Assistance Program will work with the OCBA to coordinate the cases. The four areas the mentors and new lawyers will focus on are landlord/tenant, family law, debt collection and criminal expungement.
What Vicent says he’s missing, more than the regular paycheck, is the mentorship he would be receiving if he worked at a large law firm.
“The effect of not having that mentorship is this fear of making a mistake,” he said. “It’s scary to think that you could mess up someone’s life because you don’t know the right form or file the right motion. It’s the practical aspects of practicing law. That’s where it helps to have some guidance.”
He’s busy with his new practice, but not as busy as he’d like to be. And he’s unable to grow professionally as quickly as he’d like.
“I have to stay in my zone, and I know I could do more,” Vicent said. “But I have to stay in this small circle of competency.”
But not every new lawyer does that, said Kurt E. Schnelz of Schnelz Wells PC in Birmingham, and immediate past president of OCBA.
“There’s no substitute for being in court and working with clients, other lawyers and judges,” he said of his willingness to serve as a mentor to young lawyers like Vicent.
As a family law practitioner, he sees the effect of the lack of mentorship regularly.
“Family law is an area where a lot of young unemployed lawyers go into solo practice,” Schnelz said.
“The problem is, even though it may not be sophisticated commercial litigation, it’s that you need experience. Cool heads prevail.”
When less-than-cool, and less-than-experienced, lawyers practice unsupervised, Schnelz admitted that it can be a drag on the profession as a whole.
“There is a significant difference in professionalism between inexperienced and experienced lawyers,” he said. “There is sometimes divisiveness in the case and the cases are not in the shape they should be.”
He works on about four pro bono cases a year, he said, and plans to mentor between four and eight new lawyers a year through the OCBA program.
“I was a kid myself,” Schnelz said. “I remember when some of the more experienced lawyers helped me out.”
