In the 1970s, I was taking the LSAT and applying to law schools. Most of
us interested in practicing law saw a well-defined career path. Go to law
school, graduate, pass the bar, work at a law firm – for the rest of our
careers. Many lawyers followed other paths, of course. The government offered
steady employment and, depending on the agency, interesting work. Some lawyers
worked in legal aid, a small part of the employment pie. A few went into law
enforcement. But, most of us saw ourselves as partners in law firms doing
interesting legal work and living out our lives in the upper middle class.
That lawyer career path of one job for a lifetime was
not the typical career path for most in the workforce, even in the 1970s. Baby
boomers switched jobs many times their careers; 11.7 times from age 18 to age 48, in fact. Job switching did not arrive with the millennials, though they have
put their now mark on the modern definition of career path.
First, most people spend less time in each job they
hold. Today, the average hovers around 4.4 years. As anyone familiar with
averages knows, however, when you include some extreme numbers in the mix they
pull the average towards the extremes.
Baby boomers switched jobs, but we still have many
among us who managed to roll up quite a few years with one employer. Those
long-timers pull the average higher. As they retire, the average years worked
per employer will move closer to the job tenure measure for millennials (who as
of 2015 form the majority of the workforce). That 4.4 year per job average will
drop. When you dig into the statistics, you see that millennials are changing jobs more often than prior
generations.
Second, attitudes towards job-switching have changed, even in the legal
industry. In the 1970s, switching jobs suggested something had gone wrong in
your career. Today, all the workforce disruption in the past 40 years drove
most of the stigma out of job switching.
Third, job specialization increasingly affects career
paths. Lawyers have ridden the specialization wave for several decades. We
still use broad category designations in law firms, such as corporate lawyer,
litigator, and employment lawyer. In reality, those broad categories exist on
paper, but not in real life.
Litigators sub-specialize by topic (securities,
antitrust, employment), and may sub-subspecialize (class-action employment).
Corporate lawyers break their practices into many sub-topics, including mergers
and acquisitions, securities, and finance. Even in smaller law firms, lawyers
specialize to attract clients.
Fourth, technology has revolutionized work. In the
1970s, working at a law firm literally meant going to the law firm to work. The
case files sat in the file room, research materials in the library, and your
secretary sat outside your office. You drafted your memo by hand (some
dictated). Your secretary typed the draft. Working from home meant lugging a
leather bag filled with yellow pads and copies of cases, handwriting your draft
at home, and then lugging the bag back to the office. Forget something? Sorry,
it has to wait until you get back to the office.
Fifth, ideas about work have changed. When I went to
law school, we expected to work long hours and weekends. Most of us didn’t ask
why, that was just the job. If you didn’t want the hours, find a different job.
Work life balance meant putting in the hours so your family could have a life.
The Clash of Old and New
Old news, you say. Sure, but baby boomers still hold
the power positions in law firms and law departments. Their views about lawyer
career paths have not evolved. But, new trends impact how lawyers will practice
in the next decade. These new trends emphasize why simply plugging in
technology will not solve the problems facing lawyers today. To perform well,
lawyers must adopt operational excellence methodologies, such as lean thinking,
and embrace agile project management.
The four trends, described in a recent Fast Company article by Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, are changing how we practice law.
1. “The
Rise of Second-Tier Cities.”
“The 20th century
saw big, cosmopolitan cities boom… If you wanted a job, you had to move to one
of those places. That’s already changing…[T]echnology is making it far easier
for people to live in places other than the larges hubs and still have access
to jobs they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Talk about practicing law and New York quickly comes
to mind. Washington D.C. is a close second. But, all large, urban, U.S. Cities
play a role in the 21st century legal industry. As the Fast Company article notes, however, these cities
have become cost prohibitive. Even if lawyers in large law firms can afford
living there, the support staff can’t. Plus, clients cannot afford offices
there because their.
Second-tier cities, that is, smaller urban areas, are
becoming the new growth areas. When you can set up an office in one of these
areas and still serve clients around the world, why pay the high costs of rent
necessary to have large offices in the first-tier cities?
Many large law firms have begun downsizing their
offices as lawyers spend less time in the office and more time working from
alternative locations. Firms don’t need library space, can reduce filing space,
have smaller numbers of support staff, and increasingly recognize that large
offices don’t sit well with clients.
The next logical step is the mini-trend of virtual law
firms. Why have an office when everyone can work out of his or her home office,
coffee shop, or client’s office. In fact, as Quinn Emmanuel showed this year,
why bind lawyers to a particular geography? Why not let them work anywhere in
the world (Quinn Emmanuel allowed associates to do this for short stints)
providing they stay within technology’s reach?
2.
“More nanodegrees and nanojobs.”
“Differentiated labor
is a basic building block of complex societies and has been around far longer
than the Industrial Revolution that accelerated it. But technological change is
ensuring that ever greater specialization continues into the 21st century… The
half-life of a skill is shrinking, which points to the growing need for
continuous education and re-education. Rather than earning one big degree then
going to look for a lifelong job at a single corporation, most smart workers
will now follow a repeatable cycle: learn, work, learn, work.”
No, these are not STEM degrees and jobs in science. As
the knowledge base for each job expands and and it gets harder to become and
stay an expert, people have responded by shrinking their fields of expertise.
Better to become a big fish in a smaller pond. First, we had tax lawyers, then we
had tax lawyers specializing in mergers and acquisitions, and now we have tax
lawyers specializing in certain types of deals.
These narrowly defined fields lead to nanojobs. The
nanojob trend appears in many fields, not just law. Coders learn new software
languages every few years. Nanojobs require training in new specialties, which
gives rise to nanodegrees.
3. “Job
seekers get choosier.”
“People are going to be more selective about the jobs
they take, not based merely on compensation, but on how those positions fit
with their values, lifestyles, and professional development goals.”
While we knew our probably career paths in the 1970s,
we didn’t question the downsides of those paths. Abnormally long workdays,
volumes of repetitive and mundane tasks, a singular focus on the billable hour,
and mounds of stress, did not deter us. As the joke goes, the partner’s
question “are you busy this weekend” was rhetorical, not real. It didn’t occur
to us to say, “yes I am.”
Today, even when the challenge doesn’t get a voice it
is there. Millennials ask “why should I do this”? In the labor-centric world of
law, the answer often remains “because someone has to do it.” Smart people respond to
that answer, especially in an industry seeing fewer job opportunities, by
looking to other fields for careers.
4.
“Entrepreneurship expands.”
“The opportunities for
entrepreneurship have steadily become better distributed around the country.
But there’s also a growing segment of people who are turning into entrepreneurs
in a different sense—without having a big idea or creating a product. Rather than
founding a startup, they’re simply working independently as freelancers or by
teaming up with one another.”
Lawyers working in law firms already qualify as
entrepreneurs. Each lawyer must build his or her practice, especially by the
time partnership rolls around. Law firms, by design, are confederations of
entrepreneurs. In fact, most law firms still are small, where only a few, a
couple, or one lawyer work. Lawyers have lived in the entrepreneur space for
years.
But, a new type of lawyer-entrepreneur has emerged.
Staffing companies have given some lawyers more opportunities. Axiom, which
describes itself as a provider of tech-enabled legal services, is the best
known home for freelance lawyers. The Axiom lawyers choose alternative careers
(at least alternative to the traditional model), with more flexibility.
Moreover, clients have warmed to the concept of
freelance lawyers. In addition to Axiom and other alternative providers, we
have contract lawyers, of counsel relationships, temporary staff lawyers, and
other variations of the theme.
Leveraging these Trends in the Legal Industry
For years, many of us have argued that lawyers should
take up process improvement and project management to help clients. We have had
mixed success. Lawyers, whether in law departments or law firms, are not
anxious to move away from long hours of mundane work in favor of shorter hours
adding more value (okay, I may have loaded that sentence a bit, but you get
what I mean).
So, I’m going to take another approach. Lawyers, if
you won’t change for your clients, then ask “What’s in it for me? Why should I
learn how to use process improvement and project management?” The answer – a
better chance that clients will hire you, you will have a meaningful career,
and your career will not close out in a few years. That’s right, if I can’t
successfully appeal to your sense of serving clients and society, I’ll appeal
to your pocketbook.
I’m not saying you should become a process improvement
or project management expert. I am saying you should learn how those concepts
work, and find experts in those fields who can bring sense to your practice.
The CEO, the doctor, the architect, and other professionals don’t try – and
know they can’t – do all the tasks needed to succeed. Lawyers should do the
same.
You can only work so many hours a year, why not work
with someone who can double the value of those hours? You can only manage so
many tasks, why not get assistance from someone who can increase that number?
There it is – if you won’t do it for your clients, do
it for yourself!
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