Mother in Law: Gen Z needs to start thinking about profits

The main reason I started this column was to add another voice from the high street to the Gazette, which at the time seemed full of articles, accompanied by pictures of skyscrapers, about mergers and acquisitions that I just couldn’t relate to. I worked part-time, and still do, and would run out of the door at 5.30pm because leaving 15 minutes late would mean missing bath time. My life is mainly conducted outside work, my kids are infinitely more interesting than my files, and I want to spend my evenings with my husband and dog. 

Despite writing about this for a number of years, a while back I made the innocuous comment that ‘I see a lot of people prioritising their lunch hour’ these days, and there ensued a little bit of a pile-on, with people apparently assuming I meant that this was a bad thing. To be fair, the article was about Gen Z seeming a bit ‘entitled’, but the comment about lunch hours was not linked to that. How dare I, the comments said, make people work through their lunch hour? 

Anyway, at the risk of upsetting more anonymous lawyers who don’t read things properly, I’m going in again. By ‘going in’ I mean ‘trying to say something I’m seeing in the industry that is quite subtle and nuanced and appears to be a trend but doesn’t apply to everyone’. 

Building is necessary

When I was starting out in my career, it was immediately obvious to me that I needed to build something. I needed to hone my craft, and build a caseload because there wasn’t one ready-made for me at my firm. I needed to build a network. The link between my achievements and the success of the firm was made clear to me, in part because it was a small firm, and although it was frustrating to get paid a fixed salary and watch the partners take the rest, I could see that I needed to build my own path to those profits. Since then, I’ve moved to slightly bigger firms and built teams with the people I want in them – people who share my values. I’ve built relationships with other professionals and with the community (for example by being a school governor). This is all with the primary purpose of attracting good work so that we can be more profitable and I can take my kids on nice holidays and shop in M&S Food occasionally. 

I think it is still considered a bit crass to talk about our work in these terms, but we are like any other business. You don’t see carpet fitters working hard because they are passionate about carpets, or the history of carpets, or going to conferences, passionately debating different types of floor covering and whether a particular decision to use tiles instead was wrong. Because that’s what we do, right? The point that I am making (poorly) is that we are primarily in business, building things. We are striving to build things. And I love it. I love the sense of ownership – that my ideas and effort can make a difference to the way we do things, to the team members, to the profitability of the firm, and to the community. I still prefer watching telly with my kids, don’t get me wrong, but I do get a sense of fulfilment from seeing our reach, our expertise and our profit grow. 

More importantly, this other stuff is also enriching. Remember in lockdown when we just stared at a screen and we worried our senses would become dulled? I remember days when my fingers hurt from typing because there were no ups or downs in the day, just me pounding out work. 

Keeping our industry going

Here’s the controversial bit. I don’t think the next generation wants to do the other stuff. I think they want to fee-earn and go home. I think they want a salary, and for that salary to go up each year if they do their fee-earning well. The point isn’t about work-life balance, although I think they are better at that, but about doing the work and being less involved in the business. I’ve particularly seen this attitude at one or two of the new-ish private equity/PLCs, and those law firms are perhaps making the most of this. The recruitment market is employee-led, and maybe those firms have worked out what 3-5 PQE solicitors want: matcha and a steady flow of work.

First, logic dictates that this can’t go on. The steady flow of work has to come from somewhere. Probably, at the moment in these types of firm, from senior people with their own following. But what happens when they retire? It is not only about bringing in work, but also about understanding that training is part of their job, and nurturing junior lawyers. That’s another thing that is required to keep the industry going. And while lawyers aren’t always the best business people, surely it is better for everyone to be thinking about profitability if you want to make a profit? And why would you want to work somewhere where that profit is always going to external investors? I don’t get it, and I don’t think it can last.