Celebrating National Apprenticeship Week: A Mentor's Perspective
11 Feb 2025
National Apprenticeship Week is a time to celebrate the positive impact apprenticeships have on individuals and businesses. At Sort Group, we recognise the value of investing in young people, helping to develop talent while providing hands-on experience and a clear path for career progression.
Just as apprenticeships provide valuable learning experiences, our mentors play a key role in this journey, offering guidance and expertise to help apprentices cultivate new skills, build confidence, and thrive in the workplace.
In this feature, Mark Hanson, our Post-Completion Mentor at Sort Legal, shares his insights on the value of mentoring and how apprenticeships benefit both the individual and wider team.
How do you approach mentoring to ensure the success of your apprentice?
My approach is very much based on the individual themselves. I try to get a sense of the best working environment and approach for that person (whether it be hands-on or ‘leave-them-be’) and work to their strengths in that regard, while always being available for questions and in-depth analysis of the work we do. Much like with everyone in the company, every apprentice has a unique perspective and qualities that they bring, so I never try to restrict my approach to just one way.
What challenges have you faced in mentoring, and how have you overcome them?
Mentoring is still quite a scary prospect to me at times, and I think the most challenging part of it is having the confidence in my own knowledge and experience to be able to pass this on to apprentices, without going too into the weeds with it and confusing them. What seems second nature to me is completely foreign to others, and I think over time I have managed to develop a simple enough language for describing Post Completion work for apprentices to digest and understand.
What do you think is the biggest benefit of apprenticeships for companies & young people?
I do really feel that having a clean slate of knowledge to work on and grow is a huge benefit. I myself came into this line of work with no prior law experience, so to be able to mold and develop individuals right from the very beginning, and also be able to take on a more common sense approach from their side, I feel is incredibly beneficial and helpful to a firm. Sometimes you can get lost in the complications of your role, and it just takes an apprentice with an open mind and focus to break it down simply and effectively.
How do you think having apprentices has impacted the workplace culture at Sort?
I feel there is a bright, youthful energy within the firm, where everybody feels a lot closer connected and aware of the overall goal of our company, and where teams feel a lot more interlocked. Having apprentices spread out across different teams is certainly a big factor in all of this, bringing teams closer by having their shared experience of their apprenticeship cross over into their everyday work.
What do you find most rewarding about being a mentor?
Most recently, Dione, the first apprentice I took on, found herself moving up into a role in the Remortgage team. It’s a brilliantly rewarding feeling to know that someone who, only a handful of years ago, came into this company with no prior experience in law, or even in an office role, has developed and grown to the point where they are now going to be handling their own caseloads. I’ve no doubt my other apprentices will be in a position, in time, to do the same, so seeing the individual growth of each of them is a real joy.
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