Amy Timmer is Associate Dean of Students and Professionalism at WMU Cooley Law School. She is a member of the full-time faculty and has taught Torts and Equity and Remedies for 21 years. She designed and oversees the implementation of Cooley’s Professionalism Plan, which has earned the Gambrell Professionalism Award from the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Professionalism.

A key part of Cooley’s Professionalism Plan involves mentoring for law students. To that end, she established a 60-minute professionalism mentoring program with local bar associations. She also helped design and participated in a study comparing traditional mentoring to episodic mentoring. Many aspects of her program are featured in her book, 60-Minute Mentoring for Lawyers and Law Students.

Dean Timmer is one of the founding members of the National Legal Mentoring Consortium, and currently serves as Executive Committee member and Chair of its Best Practices Committee. She presented at the 2010 and 2014 national conferences on legal mentoring and on episodic mentoring, and was a panel presenter on mentoring at the National Association for Law Placement 2012 conference.

In addition, Dean Timmer has presented on law student professionalism and mentoring to law schools, attorney organizations, business groups, and at local, state-wide, and national conferences.

What people are saying about Amy’s book:

"One of the shifts taking place in mentoring is the focus on the mentee’s learning rather than the mentor’s teaching or advising. Episodic mentoring supports this shift by emphasizing that law students and young lawyers need to be self-directed learners who find or create “learning moments” by reaching out to others with more experience and knowledge. Unlike traditional mentoring, episodic mentoring is not grounded in a personal, trust-based relationship; however, it creates multiple opportunities for those relationships to form. As described in this book - which clearly explains both the benefits and limitations of episodic mentoring - this process is an expedient and useful way to help young lawyers learn and connect professionally. The book is a valuable guide for anyone interested in episodic mentoring.” 

 Ida Abbott, President, Ida Abbott Consulting; Author, The Lawyer’s Guide to Mentoring

Amy Timmer and Matthew Cristiano have written a highly useful, timely book which is an essential read for anyone involved with mentoring. They make a strong case for “episodic” mentoring, short mentoring sessions which can address a specific issue important to the mentee and of immediate importance. Lawyers and law students as well as law firms, bars and law schools with more formal, structured mentoring programs can benefit by encouraging episodic mentoring in addition to their formal programs.

Sometimes matters need immediate attention and it is always a good idea to have multiple mentors. Episodic mentoring is a way to achieve both.

This an important book on a so far underutilized tool to gain the maximum benefit form mentoring for both mentees and mentors.

John E. Montgomery, Dean Emeritus, University of South Carolina Law School and director, The National Legal Mentoring Consortium