(L to R) Colin Levy, Claire Debney and Gemma Dreher

About a month ago Gemma Dreher, veteran senior counsel at TD Bank N.A. in Portland, Maine, took under her wing a young corporate counsel at Salary.com LLC named Colin Levy, forming the first mentoring relationship under a new pilot program for in-house counsel in the U.S.

Dreher is president of the Northeast chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, which is the first U.S. group to offer the tech-based mentoring program called MOSAIC, which stands for Mentoring Opportunities Shared Amongst In-House Counsel. The program was developed in 2015 by two in-house counsel in the U.K.

Dreher said the program uses a software platform that matches up mentors and mentees based on their interests, their needs and their stated preferences, including geography, industry, practice area and experience.

Dreher and Levy's hookup is really a test run for the program for ACC. They have known each other for years since Dreher hired Levy as an in-house counsel at the Velcro Group Corp., before they both moved on to other companies. They went through MOSAIC's computerized matchmaking process to formalize their mentoring relationship.

Dreher told Corporate Counsel, "If you are having a problem with a boss or a legal disagreement or political issues, this relationship allows you the freedom to discuss those things confidentially, and outside the career advancement-type of environment you work in."

Since her chapter announced the program in late September, she says it has attracted a couple of new in-house counsel each week—more mentees than mentors so far, but she is working on growing both groups.

"MOSAIC also offers tools to help you structure your relationship in a way that works for both of you," she added. "You don't have to commit to a set number of hours each week or month, or to how long you will continue the relationship. It's up to each match to decide."

The program is available to all in-house counsel. It is free to mentors, but there is a $99 initial fee for mentees. Dreher said ACC is covering the cost for the first 40 mentees in the pilot program. If all goes well, she said, "presumably at some point we will roll it out across the U.S."

Levy, who is Salary.com's sole corporate counsel, said he found MOSAIC's matching process to be "smart, unique and helpful."

He said he has talked with Dreher about managing relationships with outside counsel and with stakeholders, and about some specific legal questions. "Gemma and I are both transactional type attorneys, so we tend to focus on that area," he added.

"I think mentoring is a really powerful way for people to learn and grow," Levy said, "especially for attorneys in a challenging world where demands can change on a whim."

He also knows, and Dreher confirms, that she has benefitted from the mentoring relationship as well. "She has learned about the legal tech space in the industry, which is an interest of mine," he said.

Dreher said she also learned that it's OK to be vulnerable. "Colin wrote a personal blog about mental health a few weeks ago, and that vulnerability and openness was really instructive to me," she said. "We talked about it. Now it's OK to be vulnerable. Colin validated that for me."

The important message, she said, is that "mentors get a lot out of this program too. It's not just about giving."

Dreher said she became interested in doing the pilot program after meeting with co-founder Claire Debney in London last December. "The U.K. attorneys are very committed to the concept of cross-company mentoring," she said.

Debney spoke with Corporate Counsel on Tuesday explaining how she and another in-house attorney came up with the concept four years ago and tried it out with a handful of companies in London.

"You have to remember there is nothing like MOSAIC in the profession, so we have no tried-and-tested formula or roadmap to follow," Debney said. "We go purely on our experiences and the feedback we get from our members."

The idea caught on, garnering over 100 mentoring pairs, and MOSAIC's leaders decided to invest in the software and go online.

Debney said she has several mentees—the platform allows that—and some of her mentees have gone on to become mentors.

She recalled that her first in-house job was at the Gillette Co., now part of Procter & Gamble, in London in 2003. She went on to become general counsel for group legal affairs and compliance at Reckitt Benckiser Group, where she was when she co-founded MOSAIC with Niamh Grogan, then chief legal and regulatory officer for Visa Europe.

The two women worked on MOSAIC outside their day jobs. They did the first mentor-mentee matches, Debney said, by studying paper applications on the living room floor in the evenings.

Now online, MOSAIC has spread throughout the U.K. as well as to the U.S. and beyond. Debney's role also has evolved and includes offering leadership training programs and customized learning solutions for legal departments.

"We like to dream big," Debney said. "We see the benefit of the different perspectives that international mentoring connections can bring … We have lots of exciting ideas for the future."