Law Department Management Blog
The term “reverse mentoring,” new to me, it appears in InsideCounsel, April 2012 at 41. They are programs “in which people who are in the earlier stages of their careers mentor more-experienced attorneys in the department to help them to see the organization from the eyes of people at an earlier stage.” The article does not give an example of a law department with a reverse mentoring initiative, although it mentions the legal departments of Gap Inc. and 3M as promoters of traditional top-down programs.
General counsel who want to take the pulse of their junior lawyers would be more likely to hold skip level meetings, arrange informal lunches, or learn by wandering around. One reverse-mentoring exception I can imagine would be on use of software, where an enlightened but technologically backward senior lawyer might welcome some tutoring by a computer-savvy younger lawyer.