Wooing Millennials Will Be Crucial to a Firm's Bottom Line
Millennials, who will soon comprise both a huge part of a firm's workforce and its client base, are looking for very specific criteria from law partners.
March 01, 2019 at 12:00 PM
3 minute read
You might as well get along with your millennials because they aren't going anywhere. According to the “Working For and With Millennials” panel held at this year's ABA Tech Show, you might even have a surplus of them before too long.
“In 10 years our office will be staffed by 75 percent millennials. That means that millennials will be running the majority of all of our offices,” said moderator Patrick Palace of Palace Law.
The panel focused in large part in how to keep this age group productive and happy. One obvious way to attract and keep top tier millennial talent? Show them the money.
Amy Krieg, an attorney and compliance officer with Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley (Mich.), noted that millennials have more post-graduate degrees than any other generation. That, combined with the rising cost of student loans, means that by the time they hit the work force, addressing that debt is going to be a top priority.
Public service organizations offer employees loan forgiveness after 10 years of service, which could be a deal breaker for small firms offering comparable salaries.
“You're actually competing with those public service loan organizations and you don't know it,” said Krieg.
Chris Fortier, an attorney-adviser with the Social Security Administration's Office of Hearing Operations, also advised firms to be transparent about the kinds of bonuses, expectations and raise structures that are in place.
“Having that conversation in the beginning… that's going to go a long way to retaining that particular millennial attorney. It'll go a long way towards the morale,” Fortier said.
Office culture can also play a key role in luring top-tier millennial talent through the door. Since the millennial demographic itself is so diverse in terms of background and ethnicity, they tend to look for the same from their potential colleagues.
Emily Wajert, an employment associate at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, said that firms should be prepared to show specific examples of how they've worked to improve their culture or spread diversity among the staff.
“As a young woman, I asked a lot of questions about women partners in the firm,” said Wajert.
Firms won't just be courting millennial employees either. As the group takes on more prominence inside corporations and other business partners, lawyers may have to change their traditional approach to practices like billing and begin to adopt technology at a more rapid clip.
According to Wajert, millennials prefer fixed fees over the traditional billable hours model. One reason? They want things done faster and aren't inclined to indulge a system that rewards lawyers for racking up the extra hours.
Firms should also do what they can to beef up their web presence and implement solutions that can generate a desired result faster, she added. Failure to do so could result in a bad review on Yelp or other social media platforms.
“Millennials are more likely to complain if they don't get the excellent service they think they deserve,” Wajert said.
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