Millennials. The word invokes both confusion and ire in many of today's senior lawyers. To quote the writer of the Foreword to my new book, “We love to poke fun at them but no one can deny their power and influence on the world today.” She should know. As a top partner in a global law firm, she has many millennials reporting to her.

In that new book, What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publications, 2018), I explore the new generation of lawyers, their importance to law practice today, and their link to practitioners of the past. One thing is undisputable from my research: Millennial lawyers view the world differently than recent past generations of lawyers, and they have different expectations.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, millennials, who were born generally between 1980 and 2000, make up the largest generation since the Baby Boomers and outnumber Generation X by nearly three times. By 2020, millennials will comprise 50% of the workforce, and that percentage will increase to 75 percent by the year 2030.

Baby Boomers are retiring in numbers too great for the follow-on Generation X to replace. As a result, millennials will play a very large role in the workforce of the future.

Many of the accusations leveled against millennials do not fit the millennial lawyers among them. For example, millennials often are described by older generations as lazy and averse to demanding work. That description, however, is hard to hang on millennial lawyers. Law school is no walk in the park, and bar passage is almost impossible without late nights and stressful days of very demanding work. It is not the hard work itself but the process of hard work that millennial lawyers view differently. Hard work of the workaholic variety does not appeal to them.

Millennial lawyers possess values that we have not seen in the workplace in recent history. According to a study about and by millennial lawyers, those values include a desire for inclusion and an aversion to isolation. Millennial lawyers also want feedback about their work on a regular basis not just once a year. They like being part of a team, and they want to be involved in projects. They want client contact and professional development training, and they want purpose and meaning in their work. Many of them are creative and entrepreneurial, and they want to use those skills in practice.

They care less about money and power than prior generations, and they prefer healthy law firm cultures and work-life balance. Many of them view partnership positively, but they want partnership on their own terms. They are tech savvy, and they know that face time all the time is an unnecessary vestige of law practice.

And they reject the toxic cultures of many, especially large, law firms. They want something different than the extreme competition, backstabbing, and obsession with money and power that lead to greed, and they do not want to replicate the unbalanced and unhealthy life styles of many of the lawyers they have seen and heard.

Many millennial lawyers were raised by parents whose failed marriages, alcohol and substance addictions, and severe health problems are traceable to the stresses of law practice. Unreasonably high billable hour and client development demands, fierce competition and lack of congeniality took a toll on too many.

The recent announcement by the ABA of an initiative to address substance abuse and mental health problems in our profession came as no surprise to millennial lawyers. They knew it before the ABA did. They lived it.

Millennial lawyers are the future of law practice. If they become so disenchanted with business as usual, many of them will abandon practice. They will not be around to fill the gaps created at the middle of firms by their departures, and they will not be around to take law firms into the future with solid and profitable succession plans. They will have bailed out, and we will have given them the first pushes.

So, when we ignore millennial lawyers and isolate them in cubicles and small offices all day without caring whether their existence is even acknowledged, we deliver that push. When we deny them effective mentorship, we deliver that push. When we fail to acknowledge receipt of their work product because we are important and they are not, we deliver that push. When we speak to them in harsh tones and dress them down for minor mistakes, we deliver that push. And when we fail to even say hello to them when we meet in the hallways, we deliver that push.

This is what we read in the studies, this is what we hear from career counselors, and this is what I am told by too many young lawyers as I travel the country to speak about these issues. It is discouraging to them, and it is discouraging to hear.

It would be so easy for us to do better. It is all about respect. Respect for the young who need a helping hand. Respect for those who were raised by us to depend on us and who do not embrace leadership and risk easily because of it. Respect for our colleagues, and respect for our profession.

I read once that we all should be what we needed when we were young. That says it all. Be who you needed when you were a young lawyer.

If it is a contest between money and power and greed versus healthy life styles, work-life balance, professional and empathetic behavior, and respect for colleagues, it is no contest.

Attention to what millennial lawyers want wins hands down.

Susan Smith Blakely is the founder of LegalPerspectives and an award-winning, nationally-recognized author, speaker and consultant on issues related to young lawyers, young women lawyers, young women law students and young women interested in careers in the law. Ms. Blakely's new book, What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publishers 2018) addresses a new generation of lawyers with a new set of values, who represent the future of the law profession.