Adrian Dayton explains the Slackoisie aversion to being forced to show up for work. Adrian has become the rational voice of his generation. He’s still wrong, of course, but he gets a “B” for his efforts. He could bring that up to an “A” if he makes sure his quotes are accurate.
Face time. It’s really just about control, isn’t it? Even if there isn’t work to be done, the boss demands that you be there, sitting at your desk, watching the minutes of your life tick away. The boss is paying you, and therefore believes he deserves you until late. How late? Late enough to prove your commitment to the company. Work Saturdays? You bet, at least half a day. Note to employers: this rubs Generation Y the wrong way.The source of Adrian’s confusion is a definitional problem. He sees the act of physically appearing at one’s place of work as a voluntary matter, subject to the employee’s agreement that a physical appearance is worthy and necessary. What he calls “face time” is what others might call fulfilling the expectations of the guy who signs your paycheck. The Slackoisie believe that they are entitled to “mail it in” when they don’t deem an appearance worthy.
I think that is the disconnect. Generation Y wants their life to mean something. They want to handle work that is significant, and they certainly don’t want to crank out the billable hours reviewing non-urgent documents on a Saturday afternoon just to line the pockets of the otherwise wealthy partners.The attitude in years past to this sort of brazen attitude by young lawyers would have been, “tough sh**, deal with it.” Bosses, you should realize you could get away with that in the past, but I am going to let you in on a little secret.
WE AREN’T AFRAID OF YOU ANYMORE
Brazen indeed, but in defiance of the basic premise of law firm economics. Contrary to Adrian’s understanding, law firms do not exist to provide jobs for young lawyers. They exist to provide legal services to clients. They hire associates in order to perform some of the work needed to provide these services, subject to the overview and approval of the partners of the firm. In the course of billing out the services of the employees, the partners seek to recover not just the salaries paid to these fine young men and women, but the fixed and variable costs associated with the provision of services.
Then comes the “line the pockets of the otherwise wealthy partners” issue. The wealthy partners are the owners of the law firm. Owners are, in a capitalist society, entitled to make money off their business. How much money is none of the employees business. The owners do not need their employees approval to become wealthy. It’s just not part of the deal.
If the partners do not earn a premium on their associates time, so that they “line the[ir] pockets,” then there is little purpose to taking on the additional work that clients bring to the firm. Law firms are not charities for their clients. Did you think otherwise? The partners take on new work for the purpose of increasing the profitability of the firm for the benefit of the owners of the firm. The owners, you may recall Adrian, are the partners, not the associates.
So each associate, if a firm is properly managed, should be a profit center for the partners. If an associate is not a profit center, then there is no reason to employ him. After all, it’s not nearly as much fun managing whiny, questioning, demanding, complaining associates as you think. They are tolerated because they bring additional profit to the firm. Not because they are good looking. Well, for the most part, anyway. There are exceptions, though this is probably very wrong.
As for fear, which you emphasize through the use of all-caps and bold face type, I’m not sure what you mean. Slavery is no longer permitted in the United States. No one, even the wealthiest partner at a law firm, can force you to do something you don’t want to do. You have nothing to be afraid of. Of course, you can always be fired, as you have no right to a job or paycheck if you refuse to follow the directions of your employer.
Worse still, even if you get a client, your then stuck with actually having to represent that client. Oh My God! What do I do now!
When your client calls you in the middle of the night, will you tell them to go away? When your client demands to see you at the very moment you planned to have dinner with your girlfriend, will you tell him to get lost? When there is a do-or-die court appearance in the morning and you have just completed a night of serious partying with your BFFs, will you show up?
We can all understand how much more pleasant life would be if we could just work in our pajamas and bathrobe from home whenever spare time allowed. It’s not that we don’t get it. But when we took the responsibility of representing our clients, plus feeding our beautiful children who demand to eat day after day, we realized that we cannot have everything the way we want. It’s time for the Slackoisie to come to that realization as well. We’re sorry that it’s not turning out to be nearly as convenient as you hoped, but that’s the best we can do.
Then comes the “line the pockets of the otherwise wealthy partners” issue. The wealthy partners are the owners of the law firm. Owners are, in a capitalist society, entitled to make money off their business. How much money is none of the employees business. The owners do not need their employees approval to become wealthy. It’s just not part of the deal.
If the partners do not earn a premium on their associates time, so that they “line the[ir] pockets,” then there is little purpose to taking on the additional work that clients bring to the firm. Law firms are not charities for their clients. Did you think otherwise? The partners take on new work for the purpose of increasing the profitability of the firm for the benefit of the owners of the firm. The owners, you may recall Adrian, are the partners, not the associates.
So each associate, if a firm is properly managed, should be a profit center for the partners. If an associate is not a profit center, then there is no reason to employ him. After all, it’s not nearly as much fun managing whiny, questioning, demanding, complaining associates as you think. They are tolerated because they bring additional profit to the firm. Not because they are good looking. Well, for the most part, anyway. There are exceptions, though this is probably very wrong.
As for fear, which you emphasize through the use of all-caps and bold face type, I’m not sure what you mean. Slavery is no longer permitted in the United States. No one, even the wealthiest partner at a law firm, can force you to do something you don’t want to do. You have nothing to be afraid of. Of course, you can always be fired, as you have no right to a job or paycheck if you refuse to follow the directions of your employer.
We can start our own firm, build our own company, or go work for someone that knows how to motivate us. We are the largest demographic since the boomers, and you raised us to fear nothing, and for that we thank you. Learn to live with us, or learn to live without us- either way, once you are long gone or retired, we will run this country.It’s not quite that simple. If you think hanging out a shingle is all it takes to make people throw money at you while enjoying life on your own terms, most of you are in for a shock. It takes more, not less, time and effort to run a successful law practice. There’s no guarantee that clients will flock to you, no matter how hard you puff yourselves on your website or blog or how many SEO words find their way into your every post.
Worse still, even if you get a client, your then stuck with actually having to represent that client. Oh My God! What do I do now!
When your client calls you in the middle of the night, will you tell them to go away? When your client demands to see you at the very moment you planned to have dinner with your girlfriend, will you tell him to get lost? When there is a do-or-die court appearance in the morning and you have just completed a night of serious partying with your BFFs, will you show up?
We can all understand how much more pleasant life would be if we could just work in our pajamas and bathrobe from home whenever spare time allowed. It’s not that we don’t get it. But when we took the responsibility of representing our clients, plus feeding our beautiful children who demand to eat day after day, we realized that we cannot have everything the way we want. It’s time for the Slackoisie to come to that realization as well. We’re sorry that it’s not turning out to be nearly as convenient as you hoped, but that’s the best we can do.
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From what I see recently, BigLaw associates who “won’t take it anymore,” don’t seem to have a tough path to the exit door. Even those who went to law school (read: most BigLaw associates) to “take it” seem to be finding the door at a rapid clip. BigLaw does not exist for the purpose of making the lives of the cogs (associates) “significant. You are there for one reason, to bill hours. I heard once that if you don’t like what’s on TV, change the channel. That’s what I do. BigLaw types complaint about what’s on TV and threaten to have the show taken off the air. In all aspects of life, they do nothing but waste time.
Adrian’s demands aren’t that unreasonable—shorter hours, more meaningful work, better working conditions—who wouldn’t want that? It’s just a question of whether or not he can get anyone to meet his demands.
(Whipping up some Gen-Y solidarity helps. It makes it less likely that other Gen-Y types will undercut these demands.)
If you ignore the bluster and self-righteousness, one thing that stands out is that the Gen-Y evangelists aren’t demanding lots of money. Adrian says it himself: “We are not motivated by money… The currency we are most interested in is lifestyle.” Economically speaking, they are expressing a desire to take some of their compensation in the form of better working conditions instead of salary.
Law firms may not operate that way now, but surely some of them could. The reward would be a cheap supply of labor. I’m sure there are partners in big firms who would also like easier working conditions and more meaningful work. Perhaps they could break away and start their own firms that hand-pick interesting cases and offered easier work conditions. They’d only pay 65% of what other firms pay, and offer token bonuses, but associates would have flex time, and there’d be a big barbeque every other weekend during the summer and company-subsidized trips to go rock climbing and wind surfing. It might be workable.
Look, there are strip clubs where the girls take it all off, and there are strip clubs where the girls only have to strip down to their lingerie. The fully-naked clubs won’t hire girls who won’t get naked, but lingerie clubs don’t have to let the girls earn as much. The point is that both kinds of strip clubs can be profitable.
So you’re right, of course, that nobody owes Gen-Y nothing, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t find a way to put them to good use.
Good use? What about clients?
Don’t let Adrian’s claim that they are more interested in lifestyle make you think that they’re willing to work cheap. Note carefully that there’s no benchmark in there as to what it means, but their idea of taking less money is sliding from $160k to start to $120k. “What? No one can live on $62,000 a year!”
But the flip side is that law isn’t really suited to be a part time job. Clients don’t seem to respect people’s “private time” any more than courts, deadlines, briefs, whatever. The demands come when they come, and you can’t expect the defendant to be cool with the idea that he’s going to prison for life because the lawyer leaves on Thursdays as 5. There are plenty of jobs that allow such trade-offs without any negative impact, like barrista. Law, however, is not one of them.
Windy,
You stated,
“Perhaps they could break away and start their own firms that hand-pick interesting cases and offered easier work conditions.”
Are cases so plentiful that startup firms can selectively choose those they want and let the older, more established firms compete to get those cases that remain? (I’m not a lawyer but know that if this is true, it would make law a very unique profession.)
If I can borrow a line from my friend Larry, “You’re saying that the reason… that you’re not doing the job… that I’m paying you to do… is, that you don’t have a job to do? Is that what you’re saying? What are you trying to convince me of, exactly?”
It sounds to me like Adrian wants all of the benefits of being a business professional without the level of responsibility that entails.
Yeah, they can keep the few interesting ones and we’ll just fight over the dregs. The thing we won’t do for our children.
Well, from what you say about the Slackoisie, no one’s going to jail if the lawyers leave work early on Thursdays. Biglaw doesn’t do crimlaw, do they?
In other contexts, some of the needs of the customer/client can, at times, be served every bit as well by somebody who is not within the the range of a well-thrown baseball of the customer/client. Even if they are wearing their pajamas and a bathrobe (he said, dressed in a bathrobe). Some clearly can’t, like the very human need to sit together in a room and work some stuff out, at least from time to time.
To the extent that I’m a libertarian — not all that much, but some — it seems to me that that’s an arrangement that the potential employer, the potential employee and the potential client can each get a veto on.
(Doing a bit of Favor Economy work for a lawyer friend a couple of years ago, though, I did manage to find the case he was looking for remotely. That didn’t make me a lawyer, employee, or legal assistant, ‘course; just a guy who found an obscure case for a friend via Westlaw.)
As to the specifics of a law practice, I definitely dunno; I’m not all that clear on the difference between a barrister and a barrista, after all, except that I’m pretty sure that a barrista can’t work the machine remotely.
Yet.
Aside from omitting one salient detail from your analysis, that being that the Slackoisie believe that decisions as to their work schedule and “face time” falls exclusively within their purview and is subject solely to their approval as to necessity and worthiness, it’s important to distinguish between the nature of being a lawyer and the nature of making a Vente mocha latte Frappucino with skim.
The former involves discretion. The latter does not. The former has emergent needs. The latter does not. A failure to be in a position to react and address emergent needs could result in disaster. The failure to brew the perfect expresso could result in having to brew another cup. The former has a job because they fulfill a need rife with variables. The latter selects a shift that conforms with his or her desire to work or make themselves available for a lovely dinner with the family.
There’s nothing wrong with desiring work-life balance per se, but there are occupations well suited to this desire. The law is not one. That doesn’t mean that a lawyer can never eat dinner with his or her family, or be available to go to junior’s little league game. It may well be that the lawyer can fullfil his or her professional responsibilities as well as enjoy and fulfilling family life. But when the two conflict, the lawyer remains a lawyer and the responsibility, in exchange for the benefits, of a professional come first. This is where the disintction comes into play.
And thank you for noting my barrista analogy. I was hoping someone would.
Once again, I feel that you are overstating your own personal opinion and generalizing based off of it.
Adrian’s comment mentions “non-urgent” matters, drawing a distinction that you miss. Continuing to criticize the position by saying “When your client calls you in the middle of the night, will you tell them to go away?” is missing the point entirely. He is fine with that. What he is not fine with is being required to stay late when there isn’t anything urgent to work on.
As for the economics of it– as long as you satisfy your targeted billable hours, you don’t cost the partners anything. Any hour spent after that target is purely profit, and it is understandable to want to maximize that profit, but every associate who makes the “target” is already a profit center.
What you are advocating is being a “Major profit center.” And that is what Adrian takes issue with– he would like to strike a balance between making money for the firm and living his life. The new currency is no longer money, but time. We want to be able to spend time with our family and friends. You can hire another lawyer and make money off of both of us– it is built into the target hours. But let us both work 1900 instead of 2200 hours.
And to scoff at that idea is to scoff at every small to midsize firm in smaller cities– it can and does happen.
Your comment is so fundamentally wrong that a proper response would require far more than the comment space allows. But in my effort to be perpetually helpful, I will do my best.
Urgent is not the sole criteria for showing up for work, even when you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you need to show up simply because a partner needs somebody there to do research, or cite check, or proofread. It’s not up to the employee to decide whether his employer’s needs are worthy, whether they satisfy the associate’s definition of urgent or not. You work for your employer. Your employer defines the need, not you.
Nor is it your place to decide how much profit your employer is entitled to gain off your effort. Whether it’s a target for billable hours, as it is in some shops, or just maximizing your benefit to the firm as it is in others, it’s your employer’s choice. What could possibly make you believe that it’s up to you to decide how profitable the firm is allowed to be, and that you get to chose when the trade-off between firm profitability and your good times is met?
You demonstrate yet another absurd misunderstanding when you suggest that if the firm needs more manpower, they should just hire another lawyer. Do you have the slightest clue what the cost associates with hiring, training, and compensating another attorney is? Do you think that the benefits provided are free? Do you think that this mysterious other lawyer will just do the work before 9 or after 6 or on weekends that you don’t feel like doing?
You are absolutely entitled to want to spend time with your family and friends. You’re just not entitled to be a lawyer and do so. There are plenty of jobs that will allow you the currency of your generation. Many are available at the local Wal-Mart.
I am not advocating never showing up to work– I just feel that the rigid work schedule that used to be the norm is more flexible now. If you need to leave, your blackberry makes you instantly available. If you are working on a project, you can work at home and still get it done. I see your point about the times that they need somebody there, but I’m sure that there is a compromise between every single member of the firm being at the firm every night and nobody showing up.
As for the profit– it is your place if you are the one working. Theoretically, once under salary, an employer can force an engineer or other non-law type to work 100 hours a week. But they can’t do that and expect to continue to employ the engineer. Similarly, I don’t see why a law firm can force you to work past a target amount without just having it be a secret higher target amount.
There is the risk that you’re choice of “profitability” means that you are fired for it. So be it. What the original comment was intended to show was that the current generation is fine with that trade off. They think you can strike a balance between being profitable and still having a family life without being fired.
And you consider it a misunderstanding, but my point is that there are costs involved in adding another lawyer, and that is included in the “discounted rate” you pay the lawyers who work less. Simple example: Increasing your workforce from 20 lawyers (paid 150K) to 25 lawyers (paid 120K) means that you can get the same amount of billable hours while requiring each lawyer to do 440 less hours a year (assuming 2200 hours for the 150K bunch). That is what we want. (If I can presume to speak for the rest of my generation) I realize there are fixed costs and break even points and all the rest, but this is a simplified example.
And the work before 9 and after 6 can be done by all 25 of the lawyers– but it isn’t necessary to have all 25 of them doing it every night. Think of it like doctors being “on call.”
And to say that you are not entitled to spend time with your family and friends as a lawyer makes you sound like you’ve been working far too long and have lost any happiness in life. Everyone should be so entitled; the exact time might be dependent upon the firm, but I don’t want to spend my life only making money and not having time to use it.
Few partners (some, but few) make associates lives miserable for no reason. The problem is that their reason is unlikely to be what you think it is or should be. You think that you get a vote in this decision. You don’t.
Oddly, this is one of the biggest, and worst, erroneous assumptions that the Slackoisie makes. As you develop your career, prove your worth, hone your skills, demonstrate your dedication to clients, a secondary benefit arises: People trust you, you become far more capable of handling the demands of the job quickly, proficiently, efficiently and effectively. The unintended by-product is plenty of time to spend with your family and friends. Not because you demand it, but because you’rve reached a point of accomplishment where the needs and demands are different. And yet, even then, when someone needs you, you are always there for them. And your spouse and children understand that you have a duty to help others, and respect you for honoring your responsibility.
The different with the Slackoisie is that they want it one day 1, demand it on day 1, and have done none of the things necessary to obtain it in the ordinary course of professional growth.
Here’s the simple truth, no charge.
You are “entitled” to whatever arrangement you and a prospective employer work out between yourselves. No more, no less. But you will find, if you haven’t already, that it’s a buyer’s market right now. There are more lawyers than there are jobs for lawyers. There are more lawyers than there are clients wanting to pay lawyers. That makes your bargaining position a WHOLE lot weaker than you might expect.
If you can find a firm that is willing to work on your terms, power to you. If you can’t, then you have two choices; 1) Suck it up and do what whoever hires you wants, or 2) Find another line of work.
It really is that simple.
Thanks for summing it up so well and so succinctly. Ultimately, it is indeed that simple.
May name my next offspring after JK. Thanks, sir. And I am confused; been working hard last three weeks and may have missed something:
1. Is working hard now considered disease?
2. Are mediocre employees now a protected or suspect class?
3. Do “mediocres” and other employees happy-going-through-life-as-a-turd now have special protections under the ADA or counterpart statutes?
4. Need they be accommodated?
If anyone knows, let me know.
JK’s old nom-de-blawg was Gray Bear. He’s good. Very good.
Gray Bear is a good name for next Hull son. But I also like “Smokestack Lightning”…”Smoke” for short.
Is it just the 3 of us? Are we alone now? Has everyone else checked into Mr. Rogers’ Demented Neighborhood for good?
Right now, France looks hard-working to me. We’ll hire a few French people next week. Labor certifications/petitions are relative thing over time, I guess. Yeah, the French have been on vacation for, like, 64 years–but right now they look good: can-do folks.
For what it’s worth, I’m still firmly in the “Slackoisie suck” camp. I had one tell me this morning that she hadn’t done the work I assigned her five days ago because she felt it was “tedious.” I responded that I didn’t think the client cared what she thought but expected the work done promptly, and well.
If I understand correctly, the Slackoisie term is “drudgery” (related to Drudge?), which is beneath them and impedes their enjoyment of their work. We must remove their drudgery or they will be unhappy. Henceforth, drudgery will only be done by senior management, so the new kids only have to do the fun stuff.
Hi,
I’m not a lawyer or attorney. I’m a recently graduated design student and found my way here via Two West, a branding design firm, and WSJ. I am however a member of what Mark Bauerlein dubbed “The Dumbest Generation” in his book of the same title, which I read and am a huge fan. Before I read the book and subsequently this blog I had arrived at the same conclusion as you have Mr. Greenfield: Gen-Y expects to the rewards of hard work without doing it.
In the case of my chosen discipline the same thing can be found. In my case it took a deployment to Kuwait and Afghanistan and investigation into what made the best animators and artists so good. No matter who it was or how talented and easy they made art look it always came back to endless hours of dedication to their craft.
Armed with this knowledge I made it a point to commit to the same standards. Go figure that in one year my skills, creativity, work have excelled more in a year and a half than they had in my first four years of school. The same applied to my trumpet playing in which case practicing, and the was the study of music theory, were the antidotes to improving all aspects of my musical abilities.
No matter how you slice it the hours and discipline are needed to mature in whatever field you choose. Also I’m currently reading a book discussing material capitalism’s role in infantilizing adults which the author, Benjamin Barber, uses Peter Pan as the fictional embodiment of this never grow up idea.
Most of my job is fun. But today I am working on a tedious brief for filing in a certain tedious U.S. district court in a tedious state.
I wonder what would happen if I told the somewhat tedious judge just that–it’s way “tedious”, dude–so we wouldn’t have to file it?
I wonder what would happen if Sheila Brennan’s employee worked for me and was in charge of it?
Brennan sounds like a person with true grit. Can the other 3 people who still demand great employees take Brennan on the road with us?
The “tedious” story is the best Gen-Y story I’ve heard since yesterday at 5 PM. Get a pink slip. Get a net. And ask for your money back from the employee. Sue if you need to.
I agree that it is ridiculous to tell an employer that. I am not endorsing that sort of behavior.
But one thing I think that the “older generation” (no offense) is missing is that we can change the tedious nature of certain things.
Think of it this way: Is that tedious brief in the tedious district in a tedious state more tedious than a comparable brief/district/state? If so, why can’t it be changed?
They are going at it all wrong, trying to change from the bottom level, but I think that the essence of the frustration will be the driving force for change when they reach the top as well.
If you were in the position of power, don’t you think you would lessen the amount of busy-work that serves no purpose?
One person’s “busy-work that serves no purpose” is another person’s winning brief, preservation requirement fulfilled, due process satisfaction, or the piece that wins the case in front of a judge teetering in his decision. Therein lies the problem: Because the new, young lawyer deems the work tedious, or busy-work, doesn’t make it so. Tedious work still has to get done, and if the employees won’t do it, then who should?
Well that is where I included reference to comparable districts or states to be a guide.
I don’t think that it can be subjectively determined by someone with no experience, and I understand that they are required to do the work.
But there are a lot of bureaucratic methods that are not very efficient that can be revised. Just because it is so now, does not mean it should be so in the future.
I am a big proponent of reevaluating everything we do- there is no reason to stick with archaic laws or methods purely because of history. If it serves a purpose, it will be able to stand on its own.
And in the meantime, do the busywork because it has to be done 🙂
Bingo. None of us enjoy the bureaucratic crap we are forced to endure, though many would disagree as to what defines bureaucratic crap (especially bureaucrats). For those who have spent years arguing with clerks, public officials and Official Women, to no avail, we’re with you. And in the meantime, just do the work.