By Kristy Bourgeois
For the first time, the U.S. workforce includes substantial representation from five distinct generations. Today, Baby Boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964), Generation X (1965 to 1981), Millennials (1982 to 1997) and Generation Z (1997) work side-by-side in businesses – including law firms – across the United States. Finally, in the context of the legal industry, nearly 3% of the current U.S. workforce is composed of members of the Silent Generation, the predecessors of the Baby Boomers.
And as of just more than one year ago, the 53.5 million Millennials in the U.S. workforce make up the single largest generation of American workers. According to a Pew Research Center study, Millennials will make up 50% of the American workforce by 2020, which means the majority of American workers will be Millennials or members of Generation Z. Clearly, change is afoot in the workplace, and that includes law firms.
Evaluating these statistics, analyzing my own experiences as a lawyer and considering the experiences of my colleagues in my firm and in other firms, I realize I have what may well be an unusual perspective on this generational shift. While my age makes me a Millennial (albeit one born near the Generation X period), I believe my values, my upbringing, my education and my experiences skew toward those of Generation X and the Baby Boomers. I value hard work and am team-oriented, traits typically associated with Boomers. I also am very independent and self-directed, classic Generation X traits. At the same time, I understand the importance of work/life balance (a hallmark of Millennials) although my work ethic conflicts with this. So, while I probably wouldn’t be regarded by many as a “classic Millennial,” I have the advantage of understanding very well the values, traits, communications and work styles of these generations.
I believe those multiple perspectives will help me as I examine the differences in the generations, and as I make sense of the challenges and opportunities Millennials – and other generations – bring to law firms. I also believe it’s important to understand fully that law firms in and of themselves, have their own cultural characteristics that contribute to how well Millennials fit into law firms, and how they can leverage their own strengths and aptitudes to work well in the challenging legal environment, and to become valued members of their firms and their legal departments.
No one generation is “right,” each has its own characteristics and it’s the awareness of those characteristics, and how members of each generation can appreciate and understand those characteristics fully, that determines how well Millennials – or any generation – performs in a law firm. And the place to start in gaining that understanding is realizing the legal industry currently ranges from lawyers as young as 23 or 24 years old, to those still successfully practicing in their mid-80s. This generational span covers lawyers born during the Great Depression to those born during Bill Clinton’s presidency during the Internet Bubble.
Considering this historic range of age diversity in our profession, and the societal, economic, political and cultural changes that took place in this span of history, it’s no surprise that there are marked differences between the generations. The question then becomes, how do we work better together?
In coming months, I will answer that question as I analyze data, examine trends, study where the legal industry is and where it’s going, and share my conclusions with you as we try to work through this truly historic time in our profession.
Along with millions of my contemporaries (those born between 1981 and 1997 approximately), I’m part of the largest generation in the American workforce today. According to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, there are 53.5 million of us in the American workforce, and we are the single largest age group in the American population. There are more of us than there are Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) or Generation X-ers (approximately 1965 to 1981). And Millennials also make up the largest generational group in large law firms, with 43 percent of lawyers in large firms. When it comes to associates, nearly 88 percent fall into the Millennial generation
And while we have taken over the American workplace and the legal industry in many ways, we don’t have the best reputation. In fact, according to The Atlantic, in a 2014 article on the various generations in the workforce, “We can all agree that Millennials are the worst.”
We’ve all heard the slurs:
- “Millennials are not loyal to their employers”
- “Millennials are lazy”
- “Millennials are self-centered”
- “Millennials are entitled”
You can also insert comments about participation trophies.
Are these charges true? How did they come to exist? My view is that these charges are not accurate at all and are actually rooted in the life experiences of Millennials, as well as perceived differences between Millennials, and (for the most part) Gen X-ers in the work place.
Let’s start with the first charge. We Millennials grew up seeing what happened to our parents’ and grandparents’ jobs. Loyal, long tenured employees, many of them saw their jobs eliminated in what were originally called “downsizings,” later softened and obscured with terms such as “reduction in force” or the insipid “right sizing.” Jobs also were shipped overseas as they were “off-shored.” Retirement plans? Does the name “Enron” ring a bell? My generation saw the social contract between employers and employees broken. The gold watches vanished and loyalty became a quaint, outdated notion. We’ve accepted that new paradigm, even though we certainly would love more security.
Lazy? A recent study by the CEB consulting firm found that 59% of Millennials said competition is “what gets them up the morning.” Compare this to Baby Boomers, of whom only 50% had the same response. In the same study, 58% of Millennials reported that they regularly compare their performance to that of their peers. Only 48% Boomers and Gen X-ers reported the same response. Technology also plays a role. While Boomers and Gen X-ers associate hard work with long hours at the office, we Millennials and our ease with technology have blurred the lines between the office and home, and between working and personal time. We answer emails, access our work desktops, research, review and generally work at all times of day or night. We may not be in the office at 8 p.m., but that doesn’t mean we’re not working.
Self-centered? When that employer-worker social contract was cancelled – by employers – the message we Millennials received was clear: You’re on your own. Don’t expect a lifetime of employment with any employer. We didn’t exactly have an option. We saw what happened to our parents and grandparents and recognized that we – keep in mind, we Millennials were just kids or young teenagers when all of this was going on – had no choice but to play by the new rules of the game. Another factor in our willingness to look out for ourselves is the changes technology brought to our society. Most of us were part of the first wave of young people to grow up on the internet. And the internet brought amazing change to the concept of career. We saw people making small fortunes working from home as web developers. We are the first generation to grow up with the notion that finding jobs online – often using tools such as LinkedIn and Indeed – was not just an option, but the norm. Typing a resume? Cover letters? Mail? No, we would upload a resume, or create one, on a prospective employer’s website, and with a few clicks we were a candidate. That was the new paradigm for us, and we accepted it. So if that makes us self-centered with respect to our careers, so be it.
Entitled? First, there are entitled people across all generations, so of course, some Millennials are entitled. I think this is a matter of perspective. Many of us grew up being pushed by our parents. Think about it … gymnastics classes, 10 year-olds heading to Canada to play in weekend hockey tournaments, individual tennis lessons. Our parents – too many of them classic “little league” parents or “dance moms” – pushed us to excel. Many of us were raised to succeed in a competitive meritocracy. So we eventually found ourselves in the workplace, an environment filled with new, rapidly-developing technology. We were adept with that tech, after all, we grew up with it. But we saw more senior coworkers who were unable to work with the technology. And we asked “Why don’t I have his job? He can’t work in (insert program name here)?” We didn’t feel entitled to that senior person’s job, we just saw that we could do it and he/she could not. We weren’t entitled; we just saw ourselves as better. That’s just one small example, but it illustrates how our belief in a competitive meritocracy gained us the charge of being entitled.
As I wrote, much of the intergenerational conflict in law firms, industry and American society may well be rooted in our differences in upbringing, life/work expectations and use of technology. And I’ll explore those factors, the impact of Millennials on the legal profession, Millennials in our client base and how we can all learn to work better, together, in future columns.
Kristy Bourgeois is an Associate with Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. in St. Louis, Missouri, where she heads the firm’s Institutional Industry Group. Kristy holds a B.A. in Psychology and J.D., both from Saint Louis University. She can be reached at kbourgeois@sandbergphoenix.com or 314-446-4206.