Griswold, a top patent attorney at Fish & Richardson, has dedicated his entire career to mentoring young associates, spending roughly 75% of his time on mentoring activities. He co-leads the firm's extremely popular Patent Lab immersion training program. Formerly known as Boot Camp, the comprehensive and grueling program is mandatory for new patent associates and is run twice a year with participants flown in from the firm's 13 international offices. 

Over the past 15-plus years, Griswold has done everything from creating the original course materials for the program to serving as a trainer, to overseeing the program planning, to recruiting principals to serve as trainers, to leading the entire program and expanding it beyond its initial roots. 

Griswold also serves on the firmwide Professional Development Subcommittee, which helps attorneys move up into principalship, and co-leads a monthly group for all attorneys and paralegals in the Dallas office including a half-hour "practical practice" discussion. 

Who was one of your most important mentors, and what the relationship like?

I have been lucky enough to have had lots of great mentors in my life—both personally and professionally. My parents, John and Nancy Griswold, worked as parents typically do to help me succeed. They also instilled in me the importance of helping others. But, I've had great mentors throughout—as friends, teachers, professors, co-workers and bosses. My relationship with each has been different, and it is hard to characterize what the relationship was been like. Most importantly, though, each was willing to spend their time to help me learn and become better. Each has reinforced the importance of mentoring others – paying it forward, so to speak.

What is the biggest challenge to maintaining a mentor-mentee relationship?

To me, the biggest challenge to maintaining a mentor-mentee relationship is making time for it.  Over the years, I have found it easy to make time for mentoring, because I enjoy it.  There's also a tendency to just get things done, and mentoring often takes time from getting things done.  But, I think of the time spent mentoring as an investment.  The long term payback is the mentee's success, and hopefully the mentee becoming a mentor to another.  It is great to see your friends and colleagues succeeding and doing good, and so it is worth making the time.