Adrian Dayton, blawger and tweeter, is a great young man. Happy, smiling, smart and engaging. It was great to meet him on the way out of the Gen-Y Panel discussion at SuperConference. But poor Adrian, one of the small vocal group of millenials at the conference trying to defend their honor against the rash of senior lawyers (with one curious exception), suffers from the same disease that infects the Slackoisie: the inability to see life in terms of anything other than “me”.
Don’t get me wrong. I truly liked Adrian, enjoyed meeting him and wish him the best in his new endeavor to teach lawyers to market on twitter, notwithstanding his being a lawyer for a total of 12 minutes and being successfully unemployed. This alone, is an indication of the trend. On the other hand, when it comes to being an expert on something twitterific, it’s quite likely that 12 minutes is all you need. We are talking twitter here.
They have expertise that they believe to be worthy of the cash of others based upon nothing more than a belief in themselves. It’s not like they’ve actually done much of anything, since they haven’t had time to achieve success, but that doesn’t deter them from seeing themselves as “experts”. No longer must you achieve expertise. You are an expert if you say you are, if you decide you are. That’s the Gen Y vision. Work has nothing to do with it. If I say so, then it is.
Adrian’s retort to the Gen-Y panel is enlightening:
Partners, you don’t understand us. Let me tell you a little bit about our generation (both X and Y). We grew up in the suburbs. We came home from school to empty houses. You may have heard of us being referred to as the “latch-key” generation. We had two cars, and in most cases money to buy all the food and clothes we needed. We would have traded it all just to have parents that were around more. We don’t want to make the same mistakes our parents made.
We are not motivated by money. At least not as much as our parents were. The currency we are most interested in is lifestyle. Some of us are brilliant and hard working, but you have to dangle the right carrot in front of us.
While I’m sure this wasn’t Adrian’s point, the message is clear. The Slackoisie can’t comprehend that there are any valid concerns other than themselves. We understand this. We realize that your entire world is all about you. What can we do for you? What can the world do for you? How can we make you happier?
It’s fine to say that you don’t want to make the mistakes of your parents, though therapy might also be indicated. There are a wealth of jobs out there in the world where expectations and demands of you are minimal, and they are otherwise so low paying and nasty that they’re hard to fill. I’m sure these folks would be happy to accommodate your needs. But you don’t get to be a lawyer, to take on “a responsibility to others” (a phrase that never finds its way into any thought in a Gen Y head), but only on your terms and when it’s convenient to you.
The Gen Yers in the audience asserted that they could be reliable, but only if they deemed the reason they were expected to stay late or come in on the weekend worthy of their sacrifice. The GCs, in the meantime, talked about how 5 o’clock came around and they found themselves alone in their office, with the Gen Yers gone, finishing up the work that remained. The Gen Yers saw no reason why the work couldn’t be done “whenever”, and the fact that their bosses (a word used to compass the broad array of people who supposedly are in charge of the youngsters) told them to do it, but failed to adequately justify their orders, was facially insufficient. Their bosses were only their bosses if they decided they were worthy, and the decision was invariably ad hoc. “Want me on a Saturday? Then tell me why and I’ll decide if your reason is good enough.”
They believed they were reasonable. They believed they were hard working. They believed their work was competent. That no one else agreed with their self-assessments didn’t seem to phase them in the slightest. They were right. No one else mattered. Me, me, me. That was all they needed to confidently assert that they were the cat’s meow.
There was, however, one GC in the audience who had smoke on the roof but sided with the Slackoisie. He, he claimed, agreed that work-life balance mattered. “Would you care if your outside counsel wasn’t as concerned with work-life balance” Dan Hull asked? “Yes, I would,” he replied, “and your firm wouldn’t be satisfactory.” “And we wouldn’t work for you, if your expectation was that we would elevate work-life balance over excellent legal representation,” Hull concluded.
Being a lawyer is different. We have chosen a profession where we are responsible for the welfare of others. Would our touchy-feely GC be as willing to put work-life balance ahead of excellence if a critical deadline passed unmet, his corporation was bankrupted by a massive loss, because the lawyers paid to represent them had something better to do that day? That would never happen, you say. Probably not, but then it only has to happen once.
Adrian’s post elicited a number of comments supporting him, with two notable common threads. First, not a single commenter was a successful lawyer. They were largely lawyers who didn’t practice and found alternative careers, where they could say they were lawyers without having any lawyerly responsibility. They assumed that non-Gen Y lawyers (like Dan and I) had no lives and never stopped to “smell the roses,” a common, though erroneous, assumption. We work hard, play hard, enjoy life to its fullest. We just don’t do so at the expense of the people who put their trust in us. The Slackoisie can’t comprehend this as being possible; pleasure is on their terms or can’t possibly exist. Their myopic view is that everything in life is a zero sum game, rather than a spectrum of possibility. It’s a common problem with children who see the world in black and white.
The second thread is that everyone else “must” change to accommodate them. No explanation is offered for this demand, other than the fact that they are here, they aren’t changing and they aren’t going to do it our way. They’re wrong. Not every Gen Yer is a card-carrying member of the Slackoisie. Not every Gen Yer’s world consists of only what makes them happy. There are millenials out there who are both capable of performing excellent work and desire to fulfill the responsibility they’ve undertaken. These will be the leaders of the future, while the whiners can sit in their parent’s basement eating Cheetos and telling the world how wonderful and brilliant they are.
The day will come when the Slackoisie won’t be able to feed off the hard work, success and efforts of those who came before them. What the heck are they going to do when each of them demands that the rest of them change their world to make their life easier? They’re going to run out of people to whine to, and then there will be nobody left to make their Cheetos. And that’s the problem with a world that’s all about “me”.
Update: Adrian has responded in a post entitled, So the Partners Think I’m a Slacker, explaining that we really aren’t different, but just have our own understanding of work-life balance.
You are completely satisfied with your life-balance. So was Dan Hull. When I spoke with him after he asked, “You don’t think I know the names of my kids do you?” That’s not it at all.
You each have built great firms, provided great service to your clients, and apparently lived life to the fullest in the process.
We want to do the same, but for us “living life to the fullest” means something different.
Stephanie West Allen at Idealawg, a co-panelist at the SuperConference, read Adrian’s post as well. She sums it up with a story that seeks to make the point:
Not long ago, the executive director of a law firm told me that her managing partner returned from a meeting of the women’s bar association (can’t recall the organization’s exact name) in shock. He said a hypothetical situation had been presented about the staffing of a case. The decision to be made was between a male associate and a female associate who was pregnant and would give birth about the time the case was set for trial. The debate was long and spirited. What puzzled the managing partner was silence about the best interests of the client. The word “client” was never mentioned.
Does this story help to clarify things, Adrian? Or does it just sound pointless, since it isn’t about what’s good for the Slackoisie?
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I’m starting to think there’s such a thing as ‘generationism’
Are you kidding? Gen Y didn’t invent the Slackoisie; it’s been around forever. We just used to call them bums instead of lawyers.
I think the answer is somewhere in between 🙂
I agree with you about a few things. Without having immersion learning for an extended period of time it’s tough to get the kind of experience that sticks. I find that it’s one thing to learn something in class or by reading, but after you’ve actually dealt with the issue with a demanding client and opposing counsel and judge your learning takes on a new hue. Sustained learning over a period of time is necessary to have competence as a lawyer.
Second, there’s way to much emphasis on non-substantive practice these days. People who are looking to practice without the sort of sustained learning over a period of time described above.
I’m not saying a person without experience cannot take something on. It’s just that it takes time, stress, and energy (the kind that cuts right through the work/life divide and kills the balance).
I don’t think a person needs to bill 2000 hours (is this even possible?) to be an effective lawyer. However, I find that good lawyers are often submerged in their issues. They may not bill 2000 hours, but they are still working plenty hard.
It’s tough to practice law casually.
Scott,
I enjoyed meeting you as well, knowing that you are sincerely a nice guy made it easier taking your abuse. You make some interesting points in your article. But you aren’t REALLY responding to my post. You are using the platform to rant about the undeserving and lazy members of Generation Y.
Oh yeah, we are also selfish:
“They believed they were hard working. They believed their work was competent. That no one else agreed with their self-assessments didn’t seem to phase them in the slightest. They were right. No one else mattered. Me, me, me.”
I believe working insane hours and missing out on watching my children grow up would be pretty selfish. Of course its not about the money for you, its all about the client. I get that. But is it really? Is it possible to take on fewer clients at a time? Is it possible that you can lay it all on the line everyday for each client- but take on a lighter load?
I grew up with a father that was an expert at a life saving surgical procedure, and rather than turning down patients he just kept piling them on. It was all about the patient for him, and I respected that- but was he the only doctor in the US? Could someone else have helped some of these patients? Are you the only Criminal defense attorney?
You tell us we don’t understand responsibility (and we don’t- we are after all in our 20’s and early 30’s)
“Being a lawyer is different. We have chosen a profession where we are responsible for the welfare of others. Would our touchy-feely GC be as willing to put work-life balance ahead of excellence if a critical deadline passed unmet, his corporation was bankrupted by a massive loss, because the lawyers paid to represent them had something better to do that day?”
Nobody in the audience at your panel suggested giving anything less than 100% to the clients. What they did say is that they didn’t want to come in to work on Saturday just to put in face time. To which Dan and you replied, “They should come in Saturday looking for work to do!”
Really? We don’t see it that way, and as much as you want us to change the way we see the world- its not happening.
The truth is, you agree that life-balance is important. You even say so in your post:
“We work hard, play hard, enjoy life to its fullest.”
You are completely satisfied with your life-balance. So was Dan Hull. When I spoke with him after he asked, “You don’t think I know the names of my kids do you?” That’s not it at all.
You each have built great firms, provided great service to your clients, and apparently lived life to the fullest in the process.
We want to do the same, but for us
“living life to the fullest” means something different.
Of course I’m not talking about you personally, or really even your post, as much as the mindset behind the Slackoisie vision of life. What’s ironic is that we understand your points all too well. We would all love to be able to live our lives free and enjoy our homes and families and Healey. We should all be paid millions, drive nice cars, be happy and have wonderful lives.
But then, who will pick up the garbage? We’ve been doing it for the Slackoisie since you were little. One day, when you grow up, you’re going to have to clean up after yourselves. It’s neither fun nor easy. (This is a metaphor, not to be taken literally.)
Boomers love the Slackoisie. You’re our children, our babies. We just want you to grow up already.
Scott,
No matter how dedicated you are to your profession, I can guarantee that I will never hire you. I don’t know if you are intentionally being obtuse or if you just don’t get it, but doing less better is not a hallmark of laziness. Your generation had to compete with rich white boys only; I’m not impressed. The country and the planet are a whole lot more competitive now than when you started out. There are slackers in every generation, and as your blog amply demonstrates, there are whiners in every generation as well.
Poor Max. The Slackoisie don’t do “less better.” They just do less, pat themselves on the back and think to themselves how wonderful they are, just like mommy told them. As for hiring me, you need not concern yourself. You would first need a job before you could afford me.
Scott,
When you write things like “You’re our children, our babies” and “just like mommy told them,” is this something of a tacit admission of the monster the Boomers have created? The Slackoisie didn’t get where they are by accident. Their “rise” (or “walk to the fridge”) coincides quite nicely with the widesprad influence of the self-esteem movement, rampant grade inflation, a federal right to family leave, and the like–all creations of their parents, the Boomers, once the Boomers were at the levers of power.
To be sure, the Slackoisie are adults, and, as adults, they bear the lion’s share of the responsibility when they don’t grow up and face the real world. But the constant surprise in some quarters of the Boomer-aged legal blogosphere at just how out-of-touch the Slackoisie is strikes me as being similar to a kid who pokes a dog with a stick over and over again and then wonders why he got bitten. What did Boomers think would happen after 20+ years of their kids being told that each one was a unique, special flower with wants and needs that others have to respect?
While I’ve never been officially appointed to speak for boomers, on my part it is an absolute admission that my generation screwed up raising our children. I’ve admitted it before, and will do so again. We loved our kids too much, and coddled them. We tried, and things haven’t gone well at all. But now, acknowledging that we’re at fault doesn’t change the fact that they have to grow up, and take responsibility for themselves and the world around them, get off their butts and do something with themselves. We always thought they would grow up one day. Who knew they would love being children so much they would never want to leave home?
Scott,
While you may have a job, it looks like you sit around waiting for people to post comments on your blog so you can respond with moronic non sequiturs. Seems a bit narcissistic and self absorbed to me. Maybe you wouldn’t have to work around the clock if you were a little more diligent with your time. Hope your clients know that your blog takes top priority. Please don’t bother responding to this unless you actually address the merits of my point.
It only seems like so much effort because it exceeds anything you’ve ever conceived of doing. It’s really no effort at all, and never interferes with my clients. I realize all of this seems foreign, but some day, when you grow up, you’ll understand how it can all be accomplished. As for bothering to comment, again you demonstrate your confusion.
This is my blog, and you don’t give direction. You get to comment because I allow it. And I allow it because you demonstrate the childishness and self-righteousness of your Slackoisie mentality. Plenty of insults from someone who has yet to accomplish anything. You have neither a point nor merits to address. Just self-indulgent drivel from some anonymous nobody. You are my point, a generation of children who think the world of themselves, their right, their entitlement, their self-serving sel-importance, despite the absence of having served any purpose on earth whatsoever.
Consider: You come here to prove your existence. Do you wonder why no one comes to you, Max? I hope someday you find some purpose to serve other than yourself.
But now you’ve gotten boring and tedious, as well as obnoxious. You have no point. That’s the problem with you.
Isn’t it obvious that there’s a big difference between being an owner of a business and being the hired help? There’s a big difference in incentives, and as a result, a big difference in mentality. Has there ever been a labor union that demanded lower wages and more working hours per week? I think not. I am willing to bet that Gen-Y’ers who become solos or partners in small firms will behave in the same way as older solos/partners.
Your point is well taken, but it leaves a question. When my generation started out, we understood that we would have to work hard, not complain or demand, establish our worth and build our reputation in order to achieve success. Nobody thought it would be handed to us. The Gen Yers reject this path, and want to argue with us that they are wonderful despite their having paid no dues, accomplished nothing, chosen to demand their right to do whatever suits their needs instead of ours and yet deserve success anyway.
When they “arrive” at the top, if they arrive at the top, it will have been by the quick and easy route. Will they then be prepared to work hard, take responsibility and put someone else’s interests ahead of their own then, when they’ve never done so before in their lives?
I thought that the motto of the Woodstock generation was “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll”. Or was that “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out”? How quickly we forget. But then again, several young men of that generation were murdered while trying to organize the African-American vote in Mississippi during “Freedom Summer.” And many served loyally in the military during the controversial war in S.E. Asia, whether they agreed with it or not. So these broad generalizations about millions of people of the same “generation” are rather useless.
Your premise is off. Since it’s impossible to discuss a generation by limiting discussion to each individual member, the only possible means is via generalizations, provided they’re valid and represent the group under discussion. That doesn’t mean every individual conforms to the generalizations, but that the generalization are valid for purposes of discussion.
As for your understanding of the 60’s, your recollection (or education) is lacking. The “tune in” quote was by Dr. Timothy Leary of Harvard, not the youth. “Sex, drugs,” etc, came much later, well past boomer time. “Free love,” on the other hand, was ours. There were numerous discrete groups within the youth of the day, hippies, flower children, freedom fighters, etc., You conflate them together, which reflects an invalid attempt at generalization which no one with a working knowledge of the youth of the 60’s would be inclined to do. On the other hand, we grew up, which is ultimately the point with the Slackoisie.
As a recent college graduate entering Law School in the Fall I don’t consider myself extremely knowledgeable on the ins and outs of law firms. What I do know is how Generation Y is driven in life and the workplace.
I agree with your generalizations on my generation. There is an entitlement factor embedded into the generation where people assume once they graduate they should have cushy jobs making 100,000 a year while putting in meager 40 hours weeks.
However, the key of your article is not the generalizations of Generation Y. It is the acknowledgment that not everyone in Generation Y fits this stereotype. Some of us have learned from our corporate climbing parents and are capable of performing the work expected of us. If we want to work at a major law firm we have already excepted the responsibility of working 80 plus hours a week and starting at the low end of the totem pole. So be careful not to write us out because we are the future of law firms.
I further more encourage you to write about ways my generation can improve ourselves in order to achieve success and invoke action to defy the generalizations we’ve been given. Regardless of how we act we do not have the answers so why not use your knowledge to increase ours rather than simply noting the skills we lack.
“If we want to work at a major law firm we have already excepted the responsibility of working 80 plus hours a week and starting at the low end of the totem pole.”
So some Gen Yers are just as vapid and materialistic as previous generations of biglaw fee fodder? That’s a relief. Woohoo! Corporate climbers!
I hope you enjoy your years of document review. Doubt it, but hope. Further more, also.
I guess you’re ready to invoke action and except it, even if you don’t enjoy it.
Let me soften the blow a bit. You’ve made a huge step by recognizing we all have responsibilities outside of ourselves and our self-interest. Now the other side is that Biglaw and 80 hour weeks aren’t the answer to life either. There are a wide variety of options, most of which will serve you better and others better than that. Bennett’s trying to let you in on this secret before you enter a life of misery. It doesn’t mean that other choices are the easy path to wealth and a wonderful life, but many are far more fulfilling, and far less miserable. You have plenty of time to think about it, and I hope you do.
While you’re translating for me, don’t forget the bit where I obliquely suggested that she learn to write.
Mark, you missed the word IF in my quotation you responded to. I never said I wanted to work 80 hour weeks nor did I mention Generation Y being motivated by money and materialism.
I did not realize that I was supposed to be degrading others. I was simply stating my opinion on Generation Y.
I’ll work on my writing too. I’m sure it will be refined in Law School where I will heed Scott’s advice and look into the various options a law career offers.
I’m no one to criticize an errant word here or there in a blog comment. It happens to me with unfortunate regularity.
This is true.
Scott,
Glad to see the conversation continues to rage. As for the comment by Stephanie West Allen, I absolutely agree that the customer comes first. I have never suggested otherwise (although it seems you and Dan Hull have experienced a different attitude.)
I am young, and naive so please address the issue I have brought up over and over again.
Is it possible to take on fewer clients? Give 110% for every client, but take on 15 instead of 30? Am I missing something?
The answer to your question is simple. If it’s your firm, then take as many clients as you want. If you it’s not your firm, then you handle as many clients as your told. If that’s not to your liking, then start your own firm and do it your own way.
But that fact is that it doesn’t quite work that way in any event. Even if you had your own firm, represented half the number of people that you would otherwise (for half the revenue, of course), the demands still come at times that are inconvenient, wnen you want to be home for dinner or your kid has a little league game. The deadlines and court appearances are when you want to be at the beach, or when you want to go out for dinner with friends. And if you aren’t prepared to put your work-life balance aside, you won’t have 15 clients either. That’s not how the responsibility of a lawyer works, no matter how many clients you have.
Scott:
I’m a millennial about to enter into Biglaw. I agree with you completely about the sense of entitlement possessed by my generation of law students. This entitlement was in part fed by an industry that, when it was booming and competing for top talent, wined and dined its recruits and kept raising salaries for no ostensible reason. Now that those same firms are firing first year associates who haven’t even had a chance to prove their merit, I guarantee that you will see less entitlement and less self-centeredness among people who are just trying to keep their jobs. It turns out that all it took was a financial crisis and economic contraction to teach us the lesson you want us to learn.
I think one thing that Generation Y is legitimately concerned with, however, is abusiveness in our employers. While we shouldn’t expect our bosses to always justify their actions to us, when they create more work for us because they’re not doing their jobs, or because they take pleasure in making their underlings miserable, that seems to me as deserving of pushback.
I agree with you as well. Abusiveness is another matter altogether, having absolutely no connection with our responsibility as lawyers and no justification. I suspect that many insecure Biglaw partners are playing bully because they can. This is inexcusable conduct, and no one, regardless of generation, has any justification for acting abusively toward others in the workplace.
Work-Life Balance: Can the Greedy Associate Have It All?
Over at Law21, Jordan Furlong has composed an elegy of sorts for the oft-scorned term “work-life balance.” He suggests that, though the work-life balance movement was already receiving considerable criticism, the concept as such is a dead letter in the…