Law Firms Struggled with Gen Z, Now Prepare for Gen Alpha

When I was in my final year at university, a generation ago now, I’d have to wait in a long queue of other 20-year olds, hopeful and unsullied by the working world, eager to get our hands on a hot-off-the-press copy of that catalogue on graduate recruitment schemes, or the glossy new tome on the world’s finest law firms.

On benches outside, groups would gather, wax lyrical over the pay and promise on offer at, say, Deloitte, Clifford Chance and Bingham McCutchen (now I’m showing my age), our impression of the corporate world somehow undimmed by the trickle of stories on the developing subprime mortgage crisis that would, eventually, leave swathes of us in employment purgatory.

And like this, the cultivation of law firm talent doesn’t start within the walls of a law firm, nor, even, at law school, but earlier.

I'm Krishnan Nair, Managing Editor at Law.com International, bringing you this week's edition of The Global Lawyer.

The tricky thing today is that it’s outside the bustle of schools and university campuses and, largely, on platforms like Reddit, Instagram, X and, increasingly, TikTok that much of today’s youth public opinion is shaped. Just as movements of the early to mid 2010s, from Arab Spring to MeToo, took flight online, today’s political and gender dividing lines are digitally born.

And it’s against this electric backdrop that law firms will have to adapt the policies that steer their culture. Bear in mind, Gen Alphas are just a few years away from your door: 5-10 if you want to put a number on it. Note: If you ascend to senior partner in the next term or two, chances are you will be the first leader to your firm's first Gen Alpha cohort.

The animosity between Boomer or Gen X partners and their Millennial associates is well documented—sometimes misrepresented, often generalized: the contempt that Boomers had for “lazy”, “entitled” Millennials; the exasperation shared by Millennials for distant partners who swanned into cushy pre-smartphone, pre-crisis partnerships; an uneasy, competitive tension between Millennials and their "over-rewarded" Gen Z inferiors.

But one thing’s for sure. Gen Z haven’t had it easy.

Many started their adult lives mid-pandemic. After years of video lectures and seminars, video summer placements and video interviews, they entered the working world via Zoom. Partner contact was limited. Uncertainty grew over billings and expectations around workloads. The work/life boundaries that Millennials had ardently petitioned for became blurry again.

It turns out that the care packages, occasional gift vouchers, online games and sushi-making Zoom classes did little to alleviate a low-rumbling suspicion that Gen Z were becoming disillusioned or even detached from work life; all this despite the vertiginous salaries on offer, which are increasingly viewed as “window dressing” and have created yet more resentment among older associates whose own salaries have become ‘bunched’.

So what you need to start asking is: how do we ready ourselves for Gen Alpha?

By reading widely on the topic and speaking with all manner of people across generations, I’ve arrived at a simple but profound answer: it’s complicated...

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