By Jordan Furlong bio
Based on reactions to a report I wrote and linked to last month, law firm leaders seem to share a widespread challenge with their Millennial lawyers. Firms are trying hard to engage their associates and junior partners in the larger affairs of the firm, to connect and coax them into leadership and business development roles, but with only limited success.
Some of this is rooted in real differences in personalities and priorities across generations. Many (though not all) Millennial lawyers dislike making commitments that will reduce their leverage and leave them vulnerable to their employers. Self-confident and comfortable with mobility, they want to keep their options open and maintain fallback positions, so they tend to resist traditional pathways to power and to keep the firm at arm’s length. That makes them different from most senior partners; it does not make them wrong.
One way around this impasse is to cross your firm’s generational streams. I spoke with one managing partner who built multi-generational teams for business development, which have come to also provide informal mentoring and communication opportunities. Both younger and older eyes are opened by working proximity with another generation that no longer seems so weird and unfathomable.
I think firms could go so far as to create “families” of lawyers born in different decades and assign them a strategic business issue to meet and hash out over coffee once a month. It’s a good way to introduce younger lawyers to enterprise-level concerns and opportunities; but smart firms will genuinely solicit their Millennials’ views and build them into the firm’s plans. I’d also seek to build such teams between firms and clients, asking them to scope out an emerging industry issue and jointly advise leaders on both sides how to proceed.
Get your people talking and working across their generational divides. Boomers and Millennials actually share a lot in common, especially an interest in serving clients. There’s no better place than that to start the conversation.
Bio:
Jordan Furlong is a leading analyst of the global legal market and forecaster of its future development. Law firms and legal organizations consult him to better understand why the legal services environment is undergoing radical change, and they retain him to advise their lawyers how to build sustainable and competitive legal enterprises that can dominate the new market for legal services.
Over the past several years, Jordan has addressed dozens of law firms, lawyer organizations, legal regulators, and others throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. His presentations help lawyers think differently about the services they provide and counsel law firm leaders about re-engineering their firms’ purpose, strategy, and operations. He’s also authored several books and white papers that analyze the rapidly evolving legal market and illuminate the forces and trends driving change in this environment.