An interesting argument broke out after Carolyn Elefant posted an open letter to New Lawyers at My Shingle :
At 48 years old, I am old enough to be your mother. And you should be ashamed of yourself. Here you are, coming to me for a legal job when you don’t know the first thing about RSS feeds, blogging (reading them, let alone writing them), Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube. And what’s more, you have no comprehension of the importance of these tools to my practice and seemingly no interest in learning how to use them.
Just out of law school, your skills are of minimal use to me. Nothing you research or write will be worthy of filing without significant oversight and feedback. And that’s okay.
But what I can’t abide is having to teach you how to tweet about current events. How to set up an RSS feed. How to track and stay on top of news from two or three industry blogs. Supposedly, you grew up on this stuff. So why do you need to take instructions from someone old enough to be your mother on how to use tools that should come as second nature?
Now Carolyn, who doesn’t look a day over 35, Sought to cajole new lawyers into an epiphany, that what they lack in value as lawyers they ought bring in value as digital natives. She goes on to talk about various technological marketing pieces, which matter to her, but the core aspect of her rant is that young people ought to possess a skillset that old folks lack. So why don’t they? And if they have it, why aren’t they using it?
Over at The Puddle, n00bie lawyer Josh Camson responds in an open letter of his own to “Senior Lawyer,” I am not a tech expert.
Its unclear whether Josh’s argument is that he’s not really as tech savvy as old lawyers think, or that he’s here now as a lawyer and doesn’t want to be relegated to the role of “the computer guy,” If the former, it would be far more comprehensible. Just because a lot of kids spend time chatting up their friends on Facebook doesn’t make them knowledgeable or competent to handle tech. Old folks, who are utterly clueless, may think they are, but that’s just because they’re utterly clueless.As you point out, I have grown up around technology. I had my first cell phone in 2000. I joined Facebook when it was only open to other college students. I joined Twitter briefly when it first came out, and even had a Blogger account at the end of my college career. During this time I was also trying to pass exams and figure out my life. Then I spent three years learning the law. I’ve spent the last two
figuring outstarting to figure out how to be a lawyer.In contrast, you’ve had the last twenty years to understand how law and technology fit together. You were already in law school when the Apple Macintosh was released. That means you’ve had the last thirty years to learn about new technologies as they develop. More importantly, you’ve been able to slowly incorporate those technologies into your practice. If you haven’t found a video solution that you like, or a system to stay up-to-date on industry developments, why should that be my problem? Why am I expected to have your solution?
One of the memes that are sold to “senior lawyers” in law firms is that they can slough off any tech issues onto the kids. The assumption is they all know that “stuff,” and they can handle the firm’s twitter needs without blinking. Bad news, guys. It’s baloney. Any idiot can type words onto a screen, but that’s not what tech is about. You didn’t realize that? Bummer.
The kids realize that your expectations of their tech abilities are, ahem, overestimated. And to add insult to injury, when things don’t work out the way you expect, like your new baby lawyer in charge of twitter isn’t bringing in a million dollars of new business a week, who are you going to blame? They must be doing it wrong, since everybody knows that tech is the future, tech is the gravy train. All you need is some kid to twit for you and fabulous wealth is coming your way. Unless the kid screws up, of course.
But as much as new lawyers may not want to be pigeonholed as digital natives, you can’t ignore the flip side of Carolyn’s point. Your law chops aren’t what you think they are. The senior lawyer is not only expected to pay you, but aside from making a decent cup of coffee (thank you, Keurig), you not only can’t produce usable work yet, but suck time away to correct and teach you how to do things right. Until you can, you are a drain on the firm, on the senior lawyer. But thanks for the coffee.
This isn’t a smack against new lawyers, per se. We were all new once, and before there was an internet to manage, there were brief cases to carry, pocket parts to insert, typewriter ribbons to change. We were new lawyers too, but we understood that an integral part of our job, a reason the senior lawyers was willing to give us money every week whether we performed good legal work or not, was because we did whatever we could to add value to their practice.
What we did not do was tell the nice person who paid us, “oh no, old man. I’m no coffee fetcher, no briefcase carrier, no pocketpart inserter. I’m a lawyer, and I damn well expect you to treat me with the respect I think I deserve.” There were people who did this, and there was a name for those people: unemployed.
It’s quite possible that the reason you bring nothing to the table when it comes to technology is that you have nothing to bring. If that’s the case, man up and admit it. And if your senior lawyers is more tech savvy than you are, spend your quiet time at home learning how not to be the tech runt of the office, because it’s frankly inexcusable today and will be an unacceptable impediment to your future as a lawyer.
And senior lawyers, no matter how youthful your appearance or what you thought of the Mac when it first came out, need to understand that tapping nonsense words into Facebook may be fun and kewl, but does not an IT expert make. Technological savvy is not a prerequisite for being young, and some don’t have the chops for either law or technology. Sorry to burst your senior lawyer bubble.
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I cringed when I read Josh’s article. My first thought — this is the modern equivalent of complaining about getting your boss a cup of coffee.
Just do your dammed job. If you can’t make coffee, admit it. It you can’t property fix techy doo-dads, tell your boss. Don’t whine about being asked to do either.
It’s a question of adding value, and unfortunately a lot of people my age (the 22-32 year demographic) don’t understand that.
Can’t make coffee? Fine. Can’t tweet? Okay. But find something your boss and/or mentors value and either can’t or don’t want to do. Do that thing, do it well, and once you have established, acceptable, parameters don’t wait for them to tell you to do it.
You’re hired.
I thought Elefant’s post was way too harsh, especially when she always seems to be touting good works by lawyers and helping the disadvantaged. More importantly, it seems to me that going to law school and becoming a lawyer is either solely a business proposition, or it’s something more. If the former, then, yes, if the young lawyer can’t do anything for my bottom line let’s put him to work getting coffee, scrubbing toilets, or summarizing depositions – i.e., nothing that will possibly lessen the efficiency in the office. But if becoming a lawyer is something more than simply a business proposition, like we’re constantly lectured by the law school profs and powers-to-be (e.g., it’s for developing “character”, “serving the public”, etc.), which Elefant obviously assumes it is, then aren’t younger lawyers entitled to some type of mentorship and training, even if they’re young and stupid (and need training even in how to talk to a boss)? In the medical profession (which is indisputably more than just a “business”), 3rd and 4th year medical students are actually brought into the hospital and shown how to treat patients. They are shown how to do medical procedures; imagine that. I think if I was a 4th year medical student and had spent tens of thousands of dollars on becoming a doctor, I am at some point entitled to show up at one point and have someone actually show me something, direct me around patients, etc. even if I am arrogant, or somewhat self-entitled (I’ve been studying all of these years, remember). The legal profession doesn’t do this for young lawyers (as far as I can tell, and I was never told anything when I started), and thus loses the right to portray the law as nothing more than a business endeavor, like selling bonds or life insurance.
Maybe you missed the part where Carolyn speaks explicitly about her interest and obligation to mentor new lawyers, but it’s in there and clear as can be.
She has an interest and obligation to mentor new lawyers, so long as they don’t make the mistake of not knowing something she deems critically important about “technology”. In other words, she doesn’t have a genuine interest in mentoring new lawyers, or people eager to work. Yet Carolyn would be the first to hector the rest of us about “expanding access to justice” for the lower middle class guy not looking for a job and collecting unemployment for the last two years. How about some charity for the person next to you whom you may be able to help, instead of the phony devotion to “expanding access to justice.”
That’s not what she said and that’s not the case.
Here is what I don’t understand…
The economic climate sucks. Anything you can do to add value to a business will help.
If I had a young lawyer who could handle all our PDF editing, scanning, electronic filing, enter billing, make a spreadsheet for our discovery, and keep our file system organized, it might actually free up more of my time to generate more legal work and work the files we have better, to the point I could hire a full time associate with a salary and benefits.
As someone sort of on the cusp of needing to hire someone, what I don’t really need is legal research. Law clerks can do that for $10 an hour.
This is horrible advice, Josh. Do anything you can to make yourself valuable. And the more efficiently a firm runs, the better chance there is that there will be more work and more money to spread around.
Honestly, I’m not all THAT tech savvy. That’s why someone who is super tech savvy would be a good compliment to my practice.
Also, my first jury trial…
My job was to be at the courthouse an hour before game time to ensure all our boxes of evidence was there. After a day of trial, my job was to ensure that we had all the right boxes, and that the ones we were finished with were sent home.
When the trial was over, my job was to coordinate getting all the boxes back to the office and evidence back to the people who were supposed to have it. Each day at lunch, my job was to have a restaurant picked out for all the witnesses where we could eat quickly, and dinner setup for after trial. Oh, and I had better have tons of pens and yellow pads available, and if something needs to be copied and brought to court you had better have it. At night, my job was to be available for legal research in case the court wanted an issue briefed.
The name may as well have been gopher.
My boss’s opinion was this: you’re useless, but I will let you sit in on voir dire and the trial. Since I am paying you, and your attendance is for your own benefit, at least be useful while you are here.
I’m still thankful for the opportunity.
Thanks Scott for noting that I do feel strongly about mentoring. I am actually a really good person to work for. I take the time to explain why a particular pleading reads a certain way, have them sit in on client meetings and even pay clerks to attend industry CLE and summarize the content. In my case, tech skills are helpful but in other practices it could be fetching coffee or carrying a load of exhibits or calling the clerk of the court to find out whether any special clearance is needed to bring a cell phone. Yes, it’s admin stuff but It’s important to know how to do and adds value.
Too bad you weren’t around a couple days ago, when someone might have read this comment while others were impugning your character and I was defending you. Then it might have mattered.