Why Mentoring Matters: Reed Smith’s Daja Apetz-Dreier

My experience with various career services offered to me during my career has not always been as positive as I wanted. As an ambitious young lawyer in Munich, I was always looking for more—someone who had the experience to help me focus on the right priorities to accelerate my career; someone I really got along with; someone who believed in me and was not just there to give me advice.

I love meeting new people and networking and spent the earliest years in my firm making sure I spoke to as many people across the business as I could. It was while building my network that I met partner Tamara Box, a partner out of Reed Smith’s London office.

It was by chance that I met her—I was a senior associate and had just returned from my second maternity leave in 2015. I was due to speak to the leader of the Women’s Initiative Network of Reed Smith (WINRS) to discuss my career. Unfortunately, she was not available at the time, so Tamara stepped in. We had a really great, open, and honest conversation over the phone, and I met her in person a few weeks later when she was in Munich on business.

Tamara is now managing partner of Reed Smith’s business across Europe and the Middle East. It has been a privilege for me to have someone I admire so much help me drive my career forward. She is not just a mentor, she’s also a huge supporter of my career.

Finding the Right Match Is Important

The hardest thing about mentoring, and about being a mentee, is the finding the right match. There are plenty of people who will have wonderful advice for you, but I have really benefited from having a relationship with someone who has that wisdom and also who I genuinely know is there for me should I have any questions or problems. Tamara makes me feel that I can reach out to her at any time.

I always thought that the mentor/mentee relationship would only be relevant until I got promoted to partnership; but Tamara has been there for me since that promotion in 2017 and has helped me grow.

My relationship with Tamara has never been a formal mentor/mentee relationship, but it has been regular and consistent over several years now. She has provided guidance at the macro level in terms of the long term, headline objectives I needed to set myself; she has introduced me to several colleagues who have also helped accelerate my career and clients that I have worked with; and she is also there for the smaller, but equally important, day-to-day problems.

She is able to provide a real clarity to what I feel are very challenging issues because she has usually been there herself.

Advice to Mentees

A key piece of advice for a mentee is that I believe it is your duty to drive the relationship. You should be reaching out and setting up meetings; asking questions; asking for feedback. It is highly likely that anyone who is going to be a good mentor is going to be very busy—so help them to help you by being very proactive.

I would also add that it’s important to be aware of cultural differences and embrace them. I work in southern Germany which is a very traditional and conservative part of the business world and I really enjoy the challenging questions I get from someone from a very different culture. I’m aware that these cultural differences could be uncomfortable, but I have embraced them.

Although Tamara is based in London, she is a Texan and comes with a suitably big personality and tons of confidence and color. Munich still has a very hierarchical environment where we refer to each other as frau (Mrs.) or herr (Mr.) until invited to use each other’s first names. Having someone with so much energy and enthusiasm challenge and champion me was a real shock to the system. Her pace of decision making has also been a big difference in helping me.

I think you need to search out the mentor who fits best with who you are. My advice is to network widely within your business and in the outside world until you meet someone who “gets” you.

The mentoring relationship is even better if you connect in a personal way to your mentor. Growing up, my family used to go skiing every winter at a tiny Swiss village. I loved those holidays and they are a very vivid memory of my childhood. Talking to Tamara a few years ago, she mentioned she was going skiing the following week to a tiny Swiss village she loved. You can guess where this story goes…it was the same place. I know this is just a coincidence, but it’s given us both an additional connection and a further boost to our relationship.

I also learned a great lesson from Tamara. It seems simple, but has been so helpful to me: “Never go to lunch on your own.”

I have taken this advice and use it (almost) every day when I’m in the office or traveling on business. It has helped me build my network within Reed Smith and outside of the firm. This single most important piece of advice has helped me build and refine my business plan over time and to win more and more new business.

Obviously, during the pandemic, it has been hard to replicate that, but I tried by hosting a weekly virtual coffee meeting with my network. It helped me stay connected, but the group also grew as the invitation was shared widely. I even won new business.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Write for Us: Author Guidelines

Author Information

Daja Apetz-Dreier is the office managing partner in Reed Smith’s Munich office. She has more than 10 years in dispute practice encompassing, among others, finance related litigation, complex commercial litigation as well as arbitration—often in cross-border conflicts.