Five Ways Millenials Can Prepare to Change the Legal Industry

Yesterday I looked at how Millenials might have a shot at changing the legal industry. There was no discussion on what that change will look like—maybe another day. But since this is a law school blog, the challenge is to apply that potential to law school right now. There are decisions you can make right now that will position you better should that change occur.

1. Decide What You Want We know that the lockstep compensation model is reeling. It’s possible that the up-or-out model is going to be under attack next. That means that there will be opportunities to choose between different types of work-life balance. Perhaps there will be track for associates in large firms to bill fewer hours. Perhaps there will be greater rewards for those that choose more and harder work in the work-life balance. But you’re going to have to make a decision.
2. Decide What You’re Willing to Accept Just like you have to decide what rewards you want, you also need to decide what you’re willing to pay out to get those rewards. If you’re after the big money, big prestige, and big respect, it’s still going to take a combination of high intelligence and tons of hard work. If you’re want a greater life balance, it’s going to mean a lower salary and not meeting your entire potential as an attorney. But you can’t have it all. This is iterative and incremental decision-making, but there are decisions (sometimes hard ones) to be made.
3. Build the Skills and Knowledge to Position Yourself My thought is that if Millenials fracture the legal industry (particularly Biglaw) along two tracks, it’s going to be generalists who occupy the track that emphasizes work-life balance. The theory would be that the mission-critical specialist can never really have true work-life balance because they need to be ready to drop the “life” part at any given moment. The generalist will be the person who is given parts of many different cases and matters, but generally without the time pressure and crushing nature. Again though, this comes back to making decisions about what you can accept. If you want to be the guy, start working on building a critical expertise, and be prepared to be rode hard and put away wet.
4. Learn How to Market Yourself The lower-hours generalist needs to learn how to position themselves as cost-effective options for law firms. Realize that someone who bills three-quarters of the hours isn’t going to be paid three-quarters as much. It’s more likely that someone who bills three-quarters of the hours is going to be paid half as much in base salary (or some similar ratio). It’s a very fine line to walk, pitching yourself on price without pitching yourself as a commodity. That’s where building this general experience and knowledge base will be key. You’re not a commodity if you’re an excellent well of different information that the firm can call on (just not call on quite as much).
5. Look for Other Opportunities Outside of Traditional Practice As people pour into law school who aren’t there to be lawyers (either because they lack direction or they are escaping the economy), that means more will come out of law school and use the skills law school teaches outside of a firm, prosecutor’s office, government, etc. Without the billable hour, many of these careers allow for different work-life balance than traditional practice. That said, they also are primed to be utterly devastated (in a positive way) by someone who brings a Biglaw associates skills and work ethic. Think Tasmanian Devil but with less debris.

There’s a space between hard-charging superstar and pot-smoking deadbeat among Millenials. It’s going to take some hard decisions and big change among many from Generation Y. A lot of Millenials want to be the go-to guy, get paid $160K, and have a 45-hour work week. That’s not in the cards. But if Millenials can throw out that sense of entitlement and start accepting the trade-offs that will need to be made, there’s enormous opportunities to be had as the legal industry throws out a number of one-size-fits-all-models and starts differentiating.

Do you have ideas for things law students can do today to position themselves for a legal market with more differentiation and options? Or do you think my theory that these opportunities will even exist is crazy? Either way, let us know in the comments.

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p style=”clear: both”>Earlier on Fearfully Optimistic: Why Millenials Could Change the Legal Industry

Tagged as: economy, Generations