The X & Y of Associate Development and Retention

Clear communication and clarification of expectations are the keys to the development and retention of Gen Y law firm associates according to the panel of partners and associates at the Women in Law Empowerment Forum event last Thursday morning.

During a lively discussion moderated by Phyllis Weiss Haserot, President and Founder of Practice Development Counsel, the panelists addressed significant differences in communication styles, desires and needs of each of the three generations currently in the workforce – the Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y – and how such differences impact the development and retention of both Gen X and Gen Y associates.

While these sort of discussions often focus exclusively on Generation Y’s fallibilities, such as their helicopter parents over-involvement in their careers and the generation’s need for constant feedback, Helise Harrington of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal emphasized the good things that have come out of the introduction of Gen Y to the workforce, including a greater movement towards flextime and parental leave for all. As a Baby Boomer, she said that she could really appreciate the change. “When I first entered firm life, there were only two women, and they both put off having babies until after they made partner. And, once they actually gave birth, they zoomed back [to the office].”

But, that demand for flextime and its related issue, the resistance of Gen Y associates to face time, is a major bone of contention among the different generations at work. Panelist Zhubin Parang, a Gen Y associate at Sonnenschein Nath, true to his generation, said that he feels that it is more important to focus on the quality of output and that if it an assignment can be accomplished via technology (e.g., remotely by computer or telephone).

Rossie E. Turman III, a Gen X corporate attorney/partner at Skadden, Arps disagreed, pointing out that face time is more beneficial than the Gen Y associates realize. He added that advises his Gen Y mentees that even if a task can be accomplished by technology, the lawyer should still take another look at whether location is important. “Sometimes [a research/drafting] task is more than research and drafting. If the senior person gets an idea and goes down to the associate’s office but the associate isn’t there, there is no place for the anxiety to go.” He emphasized that if the associate is not going to be around s/he has to establish through prior action that s/he is going to get the job done correctly and be available in other ways and that s/he must generate confidence in her/his ability to get the work done.

The Gen X and Baby Boomer panelists agreed that face time is most important because it provides the must need opportunities for personal relationships between associates and partners to develop. “Late at night is when the individual attention and mentoring happens. No phone is ringing…a level of comfort develops. You start to understand who the person is.” And relationships can be just what save the associate from being considered expendable. “There are plenty of [associates] that do good work so the choice is made based on relationships. The people that are getting laid off in the first round layoffs are usually the ones that don’t have relationships,” added Turman. Being there later also gives young associates the chance to grab some choice assignments. “Friday at 7 PM, when the deal comes in. You get the assignment because you are the one there.”

With regard to mentoring and feedback, while both generations expect them, the panel discussed Gen Y’s need for them to be instant and plentiful. “Gen X’ers like to work autonomously and doesn’t expect security. Gen Y is the generation that has had the most attention ever…[and] have been playing on teams since childhood so [they are] very team oriented,” explained Korff. These differences affect the sort of mentoring the Gen Y lawyers need. Parang said, “Mentoring of Generation Y should be more along the lines of…parenting instead of a disinterested superior boss who tells you to go do your work and I’m going to let you do your own creation.”

This is clearly a difficult pill for older generations to swallow. Anna Brown, Director of Diversity at Shearman & Sterling added, “One criticism of Gen Y is this need for instant feedback and a lot of assurance. We older generations had to wait until our supervisors were ready to give it to us…To the older generation, no news is good news but to the younger generation who is used to instant information via the Internet, mentoring needs to be immediate and feedback needs to come often.” Harrington got a laugh from the mostly Gen X/Baby Boomer crowd when she added, “I know of a couple of instances where the partner has felt a little bit harassed by the associate who [required feedback] not just after every assignment but after every part of the assignment to say how he was doing.”

Finally, reconciling communication methods may prove to be a challenge. Gen Y are, of course, the generation most comfortable with email and other forms of electronic communication and thus tend to use it more than Gen X and the Baby Boomers. Turman said, “One of the worst ways of communicating is email [because of the volume of emails received in a day]. If you do want my attention you have to do it another way. When you [just send an email] you are not actually communicating….At the same time, I understand that that is what [Gen Y] are more comfortable with. [So the compromise is] send me an email and follow up with a phone call letting me know that you did that.” Another panelist added, “To get an effective response, you sometimes have to show up in their doorway.” There is another downside of the instant communication, according to Harrington, who told a story about a Gen Y associate whose quality of work was called into question by Baby Boomer partners not because of the depth of reserach or validity of the legal conclusions but because there were too many typos in the emails.

Frank dialogue is the key to resolving these differences. “Economic crisis or not, we had a demographic storm brewing there. Different generations have different attitudes but need to work together in harmony for better productivity, succession planning and business development,” said Haserot. “We have believed that the business model for law firms is going to be changing. We don’t know how fast it’s going to happen [but] law firms have to plan for that in terms of talent management… Look at the present and more to the future to make the most of the talent of both [X & Y] generations.”