can law firms change to meet lawyer-user demand?
I’ve written a few posts describing lawyers as user-innovators -- the front-line (and, perhaps, most important) consumers, challengers and creators of their firm’s business culture. I’ve also posed the related inquiry: What would law firms look like if they considered their lawyers a potential community of user-innovators and actively nurtured that potential? What positive shifts in the firm’s environment, service model, and employee commitment and morale would result?
If we take in the data presented by objective observation, blogosphere dialogue and mainstream media coverage, it’s clear that our world and profession are experiencing clarion calls to change. The change drivers at the macro level take the form of environmental crises, global conflicts and widespread deprivations of human rights. On the micro level, there’s the emergent generation of people who are unwilling to devote years, let alone a lifetime, to meaningless work. Whether you label them Generation Y, The Millennials or Echo Boomers, this cohort of workers born in or after 1978 are coming to the service professions with expectations and values that challenge the status quo.
Some law firms respond to the call to change with a resounding: “Hey, this is what the law and law firm life is all about. If you’re looking for meaning and the easy road through, here’s the door. Leave the firm, leave the law, it’s up to you, but we’re not changing.” Other firms, however, see that their business model needs updating to meet the changing needs of present and future lawyers. They understand that the problems they’re having with retention, attrition and succession are harbingers of a growing misfit between the firm’s environment and the people that inhabit it.
Change is an inevitable part of life. Sometimes we refuse to do it until we’re sufficiently jolted by an event or experience that leaves us with no other choice. After meeting and talking to Harvard law students last week, I’m more convinced than ever that the time is ripe for law schools and law firms to welcome and engage the conversation about changes they need to make to sustain the legal profession into the future. There are plenty of current and pending lawyers who are ready, willing and able to share their ideas and insights on the issue.
Since I’m being asked to develop and present more programs for law students and young practitioners, I’ve gathered a list of articles and commentary on the next generation of lawyers and what they’re seeking in the workplace. Feel free to share your thoughts after you look through them:
Gen Y Lawyers on Career/Life Balance
Gen Y Lawyers Shunning Big Law
You Say You Want a Big-Law Revolution
Who Says Being a Lawyer Has to Suck?
Re-Designing the Career Ladder
Call Them Gen Y or Millennials: They Deserve Our Attention
Bridging the Generational Divide
One of the most interesting and telling perspectives comes from Brazen Careerist contributor Ryan Healy. In a post for the blog’s Twentysomething feature titled I’m in 17th Grade, he describes how he’s come to see the first years of business life as a learning lab. He captures it best when he writes: “I try to learn something from everything I do. This so-called 17th grade is just what it sounds like – an educational opportunity for me to master before I graduate to the next phase of my life or the next “grade.” What that grade will be, I have no idea, but I hope to figure it out while I’m here.”
