Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP is pleased to announce its participation in a new legal industry diversity mentorship program launched by AdvanceLaw.

AdvanceLaw, a General Counsel-founded collective meant to share performance data with the intention of identifying and retaining outstanding lawyers and firms, announced in late February that it was launching a diversity mentorship program to build relationships between diverse senior in-house counsel and rising law firm associates. General counsel from more than 20 companies have already signed on to participate in the program, including lawyers from eBay, Hershey’s, PayPal, British Airways, Peabody Energy, Pernod Ricard, Jones Lang LaSalle and QBE, just to name a few. AdvanceLaw plans to match client service-oriented diverse associates in the mid-level and senior ranks with senior in-house mentors for professional support and career coaching to help them gain promotion to the partnership at their firms. Although the program won’t require GCs to give work to their mentees, it’s expected to become a natural pipeline of business through the relationships.

Wyatt is among the 11 participating law firms mentioned in an article published by The American Lawyer on law.com. The article, “Big Company GCs Sign On as Mentors to Foster Big Law Diversity,” can be found here as subscriber-only content.

The initial mentorships are set to launch this month. They are to start with a phone call and it will be up to the in-house lawyer and the associate to figure out when and how often to talk. AdvanceLaw does intend to occasionally check in with the participants to track the program’s impact.