Last May, Jaime Pruzansky graduated from the Andover law school at Massachusetts School of Law. In July she passed the bar and she knew her next step would be a tough one, finding her first job as a lawyer. It’s a tough market but Pruzansky signed up for the law school’s mentoring program.
The school is following the bigger more expensive New England schools when they launched the mentoring program last fall. Offering an inexpensive tuition the law school allows working class students a chance to obtain a law degree.
At the mentoring program, Pruzansky was doubled up with alumnus Irwin Pollack, of patriot Law Group in Norwood and during the week she would work closely with Pollack at the office and in court.
“The support I received from my mentor is more on a personal basis where I can call or e-mail him anytime if I have questions through the beginning stages of taking on a client,” said Pruzansky, who lives in Brighton.
Students and recent graduates are paired with alumni that are already established in law practices and allows them to job shadow and foster personal relationships, said Victoria Dickinson, career services director for the school. ” The mentor program is more to have a guide to call; someone to talk to who is not a professor,” she said.