Gen Y and work/life balance
Arnie over at Legal Sanity has a great blog post today exploring Gen Y’s take on lawyering and work/life balance. He asks the following questions:
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?
Arnie concludes that the time is right for both law schools and law firms to start listening to the new generation of attorneys and considering a change.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d really like to think that this is true. But I honestly think that this new generation has a huge sense of self-entitlement and that old school firms won’t take them seriously, increased turnover or not. It’s obvious so far that they think throwing money at the students is the way to fix the problem. The women I have spoke with who’ve worked in big firms and tried to go part-time or have other flexible arrangements have all (ALL, I tell you!) reported back that it can’t be done. Most of them have either resigned themselves and outsourced everything possible to maximize the limited time they have with their kids (cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, nannies, etc.) or they’ve left the large firms for something else. I’m hopeful as new sites like Ms. JD emerge, but cautiously so.
Instead of seeing major changes at the large, increasingly global firms, I think what we’ll see is an increased number of students opening their own firms — either right away or after paying their dues (read: paying down those loans!) — and then using technology to their advantage to achieve work/life balance with mostly virtual firms. Perhaps then, over time, as these firms succeed, larger firms will begin to embrace these type of options to allow for more work/life balance.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 pm
At least three of my law school friends (all Gen Xers) opened their own firms immediately after passing the Bar. As far as flexibility - well - they still work a lot but on their own terms.