HNBA Mentoring Program
Participation Guidelines
A.
Active Participation
1. Kick-off Event: Each semester we hope that all, or nearly all
members can attend the kick-off lunch or dinner, where members of reconstituted
teams can meet each other, and where we can make plans for team activities for
the semester.
2. In-person Team Activities: At least once during each semester, we
hope that each team can meet for a law-related activity, such as attending a legal
event or presentation and discussing it, or participating together in a pro bono or
community outreach activity {see below for more about this}. In addition, teams
can get together as a whole or in sub-groups for informal meetings to provide
advice and mentoring, such as a law student meeting with a college student to
provide advice about law school admissions.
3. Electronic Communication: Some team members, after developing
a working relationship, have maintained fairly regular email contact, allowing an
attorney or law student, for example, to answer questions posed by a student
mentee.
4. Responsiveness: At the least, it is critically important for student
team members to respond immediately to messages from a team leader,
especially those proposing a team activity. Students should also take the
initiative to start conversations by directing questions to their mentors whenever
the mentor’s advice would beneficial. And all members should be eager to
provide mentoring to those below them. Beyond that, all team members should
make best efforts to clear their schedules to attend a team event. Attorney and
law student members are probably best situated to recommend a team activity,
but all team members must at least maintain good channels of communication
when proposals are made. If you don’t believe that you can do these things, it
would be best to drop out of the program.
B.
Themes for this year
1.
Team Rosters
We now have a sufficient number of high school students interested in the
program that we may have at least one assigned to each team. They may have
greater obstacles to overcome if team activities require transportation or being
excused from class during a school day, but we are hoping that they can attend
some team events. Please remind them to invite a parent or guardian to team
events; parental involvement and support can be very important at the high
school level.
We will also make an effort to assign two attorneys to most teams.
Whenever possible, we will try to assign a junior attorney with a relatively more
senior attorney, so that attorney mentoring can take place. If you have any
suggestions for such pairings, please let us know in the line for comments in the
response block near the beginning of this message.
2.
Outreach to Elementary Schools
The organizing team encourages the mentoring program to continue
efforts to reach out to students in grades below high school. For example:
 A team could decide to make a presentation to a middle-school class, a 4th or
5th grade class, or even a 2nd grade class. It might be a presentation on a
current legal or policy issue or on the branches of government;
 A skit that illustrates a breach of contract {Prof. Calleros has an idea for that if
you are interested} and kicks off a discussion about contracts;
 With lower grades -- the enactment of a published mock-trial skit based on
Goldilocks’ entering the house of the Three Bears, using both team members
and elementary school students to play the roles {this last one may require two
visits: one to prepare the students to play their roles and study their lines, and
another one to put on the play}.
Such activities would provide mentoring team members with a meaningful
activity, would inform and inspire younger students, and would help develop
working relationships among team members, thus paving the way for other kinds
of mentoring communications.
3.
Reimbursement
If your team incurs an expense in a mentoring activity, the program may
be able to provide you with at least partial reimbursement, so be sure to keep
receipts if you think you may want to request reimbursement.
Program Coordinators:
Charles.Calleros@asu.edu, Lydia.Montelongo@asu.edu,
Kimberly.Holst@asu.edu