Some people laughed, while others simply ignored it. If anyone had a problem with the joke, they weren’t rushing forward to voice their opinion. That’s when Sarah realised that environment was not a place where she wanted to work.

With a large mortgage and no new job lined up, Sarah resigned, then applied for positions outside the legal industry, including sales. Now working for a private company, she says that “joke” wouldn’t be tolerated by her new colleagues or management, noting that the law firm environment can be a bit like the “wild west” and the value placed on career advancement has spawned a culture of complicity.

“Lawyers are always assessing risk. For many younger lawyers, it’s far too risky to call out bad behaviour or even raise a personal grievance,” she says. “Why risk getting blacklisted and ruining your career when it’s easier to ignore something? And that’s the issue in the law industry. Money speaks the loudest.”

Going straight from university into a law firm, Sarah says she was prepared for the high workload she would have to grapple with for the first few years of her career. What she didn’t expect was to be dropped in at the deep end and assigned jobs without any guidance or mentoring.

“I love the law and I loved practising it. But I think there is an old-school, ‘I had it tough, so you’ll have it tough too’ mentality that’s shared pretty much among all senior lawyers.

“But when you’re learning, you need guidance, mentoring and coaching. Unfortunately, I don’t think any senior lawyers are taught how to teach or mentor and I think the nurturing element within law firms is non-existent, from my experience at least.”

Deeper division

Sarah is not alone in her opinions and her decision to exit a law firm and seek a more supportive environment at a private company.

Ben Cleland works as an employment lawyer for Fisher & Paykel Healthcare after stints at several Auckland firms. He says there’s definitely a division between older partners and juniors in law firms that runs deeper than in most other sectors.

“When you’re dealing with senior lawyers, there are certain cultural things that are ingrained in them from working at law firms for a really long time. A good example would be how the junior is always made to carry the bags for the senior lawyers when going to court. It’s a classic tradition, but young lawyers today might be surprised that they have to do that.”

Cleland had his fair share of bag-carrying for older lawyers who liked to enforce the traditional hierarchy. He says he worked for one lawyer with a very “dictatorial” style who looked down on junior lawyers and was quick to chastise them if they failed to follow instructions.

He recalls one incident where the senior lawyer was so dissatisfied with a report a young lawyer had produced that he tore it up in front of them.

Although he worked for other lawyers who opted to carry their own bags and tended to treat juniors as equals, Cleland, who is also the convenor of The Law Association’s NextGen committee, says there remains a widespread expectation that juniors will endure a rough start to their careers, almost as a rite of passage.

“I think people can have a really bad experience in their first couple of years, probably because there is that cultural expectation that you’re supposed to have a bad experience in the first couple of years. You’re supposed to be proving yourself because you haven’t built up experience yet.

“I think there’s this idea among older lawyers that they need to break juniors down in order to build them back up again. “When I first started working at a firm straight out of uni, I often wondered whether it was the culture of law in general. But I told myself I had to stick with it because it was a good opportunity with a good firm, and it would become a bit easier later on.

The new generation

A millennial lawyer in his late 20s, Cleland has been around long enough to witness the new crop of Gen Z lawyers (aged up to 27) coming through. Despite an age gap of only a few years, he says these new lawyers have a completely different set of expectations and standards that govern how they view work and how willing they are to accept unfavourable working conditions.

While it was normal in Cleland’s early years to be slightly scared of senior lawyers and be willing to work long hours to enhance his reputation and prospects of promotion, younger lawyers now take a different approach.

“I’ve worked with younger law clerks who aren’t as eager to impress senior lawyers as we were,” he says. “It’s probably a healthier attitude to take, but it can cause issues. It almost feels like the juniors expect employers are going to just use them up and throw them away like last week’s garbage, and so they’re not willing to give back as much in return.”

Just how important a law firm’s culture can be for Gen Z lawyers was shown in a recent report published by the Yale Law Women+ (YLW+).

A survey revealed culture is the most critical factor for Yale Law School students when deciding which law firm offer to accept when they graduate from America’s most highly ranked law school.

According to the report, 88% of surveyed students considered culture extremely or very important in their decision-making process. This surpassed other factors such as compensation and advancement opportunities, which were both rated extremely or very important by 56% of students. The report defined culture as something that “makes attorneys enthusiastic about returning to work each day”. A positive culture makes lawyers feel welcomed and valued as team members without having to conceal aspects of their identity and personal expression.

Cleland sees similar values among the young lawyers now coming through New Zealand firms. “Many senior lawyers have succeeded by working their arses off because there’s this carrot dangling in front of them – they could become the next partner and start raking it in and have all this prestige. But I think with the younger generations, they don’t see those aspirations [to be] as attractive as we once did.” Within many law firms, this changing value system and its effect on work allocation and communication is invariably creating clashes between older and younger practitioners.

Clear boundaries

Katie Gray, a certified team coach, facilitator and former partner of global law firm Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, works with international professional service firms through her business, Principals of Practice.

She often hears from Gen X partners (aged 44-59) and senior associates who feel they are left to do most of the work because the younger generations have drawn boundaries around their time and left the office at 5pm.

But Gray also hears younger lawyers complaining that partners preach about the importance of collaboration, purpose and impact but fail to follow through themselves. “They’re not really seeing the authenticity that they expect to see,” she says. “The juniors are saying they are left alone to be self-sufficient when actually they may not have the skills to do that. And that’s another big generational difference.

“Self-sufficiency, independence and rolling up the sleeves to get the work done might mean a lot to Gen Xers, but it might not mean much to younger generations.”

Issues often arise from different meanings and interpretations given to certain words and how that relates to changing world views. For example, Gray says “ethical behaviour” might mean something very different to a baby boomer (aged 60+) and a Gen Zer.

“I’ve had young people say to me, ‘the partners at the firm are just unethical’. And I’m thinking, ‘gosh, does that mean they’re stealing from the trust account?’ I was born in 1980 and to me, the word ‘unethical’ means borderline illegal behaviour. But what [younger lawyers] actually mean is that the partner is not being authentic and true to their word. They have a different interpretation of what that word means because of their social context.”

Setting expectations

It’s easy to find current and former lawyers who are dismayed by law firm culture, but others will say their firm has done considerable work in establishing expectations through clear communication and a focus on mitigating discontent.

Stephanie Nicolson, special counsel at Lowndes Jordan, says at her firm, junior lawyers are required to put in more hours than those at the top, but she’s not aware of it resulting in clashes. “There is an expectation held by everyone, young and old alike, that young practitioners will need to put the hours in, earn their stripes and do the all-nighters in the early stages of their career.

“That is the way that it is. It’s not taken to an extreme level – we’re not a big firm – but there definitely is a pyramid where the bulk of the hours put in are at the bottom and the bulk of benefits being received are at the top simply because of the way billable hours work.

“I’m not aware of any conflict that has arisen or anyone who resigned because they think that the hours demanded of them are unreasonable.”

The issue that creates far more division between older and younger lawyers is remote working, Nicolson says. While older practitioners are more likely to view a working-from-office model as the standard, newcomers are more likely to want flexibility and feel that working from home should be allowed so long as productivity targets are met. Nicolson disagrees but acknowledges the need for flexibility.

“It’s an oversimplification for a young practitioner to say, ‘if I’m getting my work done, then there’s no deficit.’ Because there are other intangible benefits of people working together in the same physical environment.

“There can be a disconnect between juniors wanting flexible working and older practitioners wanting office working, but the solution is to get a senior partner to set an example of how the hybrid model can work successfully.

“One of our partners works half his time in Auckland and half his time in Queenstown which provides a great model of how it can work in practice.”

Afraid of the phone?

A senior lawyer who has had to grapple with the practices and expectations of her underlings is Julie-Anne Kincade KC.

Vice-President of The Law Association and a criminal barrister with more than 30 years’ experience, Kincade says different generations of lawyers have often been at loggerheads with each other on certain issues – especially when it comes to technology.

In the 1990s, her preference for using email was a subject of great consternation among her luddite superiors, who preferred to use a phone to communicate.

Ironically, this same issue is playing out in her current work environment, only now she’s advocating for phone calls while her underlings prefer less direct forms of communication.

“I have written out a little spiel on how to answer the phone because I can see that some of the younger ones hate it. I think it actually frightens some of them.

“But as criminal lawyers, we are dealing with people in prison who have to ring us. There’s no alternative. That’s how we communicate. They want me to answer the phone and I say, ‘no, that’s not my job. That is your job’.”

Kincade practises in chambers but says she is encountering some of the same issues as her law firm counterparts, with juniors less willing to put in extra hours to get the work done. She has mixed feelings about this, saying it might be due to a growing understanding among younger lawyers about the impact of stress and the need for work-life balance.

“But young people need to understand that there is a job, and it needs to be done. I would be very cross if I was a boss [who was] constantly having to do my juniors’ work. I think for the young ones, they do need to work hard, and they need to understand that there is a sort of rite of passage around that.” When it comes to the issue of juniors being left to work without mentoring or proper supervision, Kincade says there are some “very problematic expectations” in the law firm environment where it’s taken to an extreme level.

She knows of some firms that encourage a level of competitiveness which discourages juniors from asking for help – something she views as counter-productive.

While she says work product should never leave an office without being checked by the boss, independent work is important in the law, and the best way to learn is by doing. “Often there isn’t a textbook answer, and you just have to try your best to work it out,” she says. “This is what being a lawyer is. This is why I like my juniors physically in an office and not at home so we can discuss everything – and if they have questions, they can just ask me.

“I tell them to have a go, but nothing will leave my office without being checked. But I know that’s far from the case with a lot of places.”

Openness and transparency

Gray agrees that communicating expectations is the key to mitigating these issues and ensuring everyone knows what they’ve signed up for, with no delusions about the work that’s involved.

It helps, she says, when senior lawyers set good examples of practices they want juniors to follow. But the most important step is creating an environment of openness and transparency. “I really think the solution is something that lawyers are not always the best at – open, honest conversation without judgment. We’re hearing all these gripes, but nobody’s sitting down and talking about it.

“Conflict can be beneficial if it leads to open and honest conversations where different perspectives and expectations can be shared and listened to by all involved.

“These conversations can be a particularly powerful way of agreeing on a set of standards that everyone adheres to.” ■