{"id":14026,"date":"2022-11-21T16:29:37","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T00:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogschapman.wpenginepowered.com\/law\/2022\/11\/21\/anabella-bonfa-a-mentors-mentor\/"},"modified":"2022-11-21T16:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T00:29:37","slug":"anabella-bonfa-a-mentors-mentor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/2022\/11\/21\/anabella-bonfa-a-mentors-mentor\/","title":{"rendered":"Anabella Bonfa: A Mentor\u2019s Mentor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adjunct faculty member Anabella Bonfa has been honored at the prestigious California Legal Awards,<\/a> where she received a mentorship award for 20 years of work mentoring fledgling lawyers. Bonfa is a local trial attorney practicing at Wellman & Warren<\/a> in Laguna Hills, when she is not at Chapman University\u2019s Dale E. Fowler School of Law teaching a Federal Civil Procedure Lab.<\/p>\n

A History of Mentoring<\/h3>\n

Her long history of mentoring students and aspiring lawyers can be traced back to her own experiences with her mentor Michael Bazyler<\/a> and the impression he made upon her during the formative years of her legal education. Since then, Bonfa has mentored more than 100 law students and new attorneys and is expanding her mentorship efforts into high school and college-level students considering a legal career.<\/p>\n

One of the driving forces behind Bonfa\u2019s passion for mentoring is her desire to \u201cbring respect back\u201d to the legal profession. The genesis of this came to her during a viewing of the original Jurassic Park film. In a scene where the hapless park lawyer, sitting terrified astride an outdoor toilet, is ignominiously devoured by an escaped, rampaging T-Rex, Bonfa<\/a> was horrified to see her fellow cinemagoers cheering and applauding his demise\u2013not because he was a villain, but because he was a lawyer. She resolved to change how the legal profession was viewed and appreciated by the public\u2013one mentee at a time, through a process of continuing education and support for novice attorneys. The glaring contrast of how loathed lawyers can be\u2013evidenced by Steven Spielberg\u2019s unhappy handling of the unfortunate attorney in Jurassic Park, really jarred her appreciation of the profession. \u201cYou should be proud to be a lawyer,\u201d she adds, \u201cyou provide valuable relief at the worst times in people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giving the Law a Human Face<\/h3>\n

Putting a human face on the law for Bonfa comes through adding practical skills to a curriculum already crowded with theory, casebooks and procedure. Her goal is to teach the \u201csoft skills\u201d of being a lawyer by introducing mentees to the human and emotional sides of the law. Students describe having a practitioner teaching and sharing failures, victories, narrow escapes and the emotional, practical and strategic elements that come with the day-to-day work of being a lawyer as an invaluable element of their legal education.<\/p>\n

For Bonfa, great mentorship comes from sharing, nurturing and embracing the humility and vulnerability of being a novice in any field. For her, mentors are guides who don\u2019t do the work for their mentees but help to illuminate the next few steps on the path ahead, allowing them to establish themselves and find their individual pathway to enduring confidence.<\/p>\n

More a marathon than a quick sprint, Bonfa\u2019s mentoring process requires patience, understanding, and unequivocal support for her mentees, with the premise that this level of respect and nurturing pays itself forward, resulting in respectable practice and\u2013more to the point\u2013respectable lawyers. \u201cThis is a \u2018people profession,\u2019 at least it is to me,\u201d she adds, \u201cI\u2019m proud to be a lawyer;\u201d and so she should be, with her latest accolade serving as a testament to 20 years of care, patience and her human touch raising the bar on respectability for the whole profession<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adjunct faculty member Anabella Bonfa has been honored at the prestigious California Legal Awards, where she received a mentorship award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4618,"featured_media":14028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"custom_author_name":"","chapman_pin_hero_slider":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[386,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dale-e-fowler-school-of-law","category-faculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4618"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}