Biglaw

A Different Kind Of Player Draft

Younger lawyers are not just ATMs for senior partners, they are not just billable hours, but people who have lives outside of the law.

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diversity law firm young minority lawyers of colorGood grief, what’s next? Some Biglaw firms are interviewing rising second-year law students for jobs already. Huh? It’s called “precruiting.” That’s “recruiting” with a “p” in front of it, like the PSAT. The first years have barely finished their wretched first year and they are already being hunted down for employment for summer associate gigs.

I can envision that this precruiting could well be extended to post bar exam job offers as well. I get that law students are anxious about opportunities, but this method of tying up candidates before they can exhale after their first year seems a bit much. Rising second years need to take a breath, some deep breaths before committing to a path that they may well regret later. The old saying, “Marry in haste, repent in leisure” applies here. Precruiting is now bumping off on-campus interviews. This is like speed-dating on steroids. And if the offer is not accepted, it may well explode. Ka-boom!

The precruiting pressure applied to these students just piles on to the pressures of law school. Some firms have told students that if they don’t accept an offer before on-campus interviewing begins, the offer can vanish, and then what? What does that say about a firm that acts in such a manner, giving the candidate no choice but to accept the offer or have it disappear? What if the candidate wants to explore other options or even choose a firm that doesn’t engage in such high pressure? The firms that aren’t doing precruiting are concerned about FOMO, so more firms will be jumping into this pool. If rising second years know where they want to go for the summer, then this is a good way for them to secure a position, but many rising second years are clueless where they want to spend their summers and their legal careers after bar passage. And there’s no guarantee a precruiting offer will still be there when the precruit (is that a word?) has passed the bar. Landing a summer gig through precruiting may not be everyone’s definition of success. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles said it best, shop around.

For those rising second years and beyond, definitions of success are not necessarily what they were; the pandemic made many lawyers do a full stop, especially newer lawyers.

Unlike boomer lawyers and Gen Xers who measure success by how well we have done, that’s not necessarily how younger lawyers see things. And while that’s still one aspect of success, it’s not the only one and indeed not necessarily even the most important one today. As the Bloomberg article pointed out, the goalposts have moved, not closer together, but even further apart. The schlep (and yes, I think that’s an apt word) to partnership in Biglaw grows ever longer. Is it an equity partnership or a non-equity? How long does it take to leap from non-equity to equity, if ever? Is that a hill that younger attorneys even want to climb?

The same holds true for corporate legal departments. Usually a number of boomer and Gen X lawyers see themselves as the next generation of leadership, so it may be true that there is no room at the top. Then what? And the years of GCs working remotely are over. Time to return to the mother ship.

Younger lawyers don’t equate the same value to working nights and weekends just because it’s accepted practice in some environments. Granted, that’s necessary at times, but to younger lawyers, there is life outside the law firm/law department, and what younger lawyers seek, among other things, is acknowledgment of that difference from those presently in charge.

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Younger lawyers are not just ATMs for senior partners, they are not just billable hours, but people who have lives outside of the law. They have seen and experienced recessions and layoffs and know that jobs today have no guarantees that they’re going to be here tomorrow, and so they must plan for themselves and their families. Younger lawyers can’t afford to rely on evanescent promises that may disappear if a major client takes a hike, or the corporate entity is sold.

It’s a different world now for practicing lawyers. The various technologies today (including but not limited to ChatGPT) could not even be imagined 40 years ago. We were thrilled just to have FedEx, word processing, and fax machines. We need to respect the generational differences, figure out how to give younger lawyers places at the table, even if the table isn’t set in the same way, and value what they bring to that table.

old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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