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Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2020

Lydia Bleasdale  and
Andrew Francis Open the ORCID record for Andrew Francis [Opens in a new window]
Lydia Bleasdale
Affiliation:
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Andrew Francis*
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
*
*Corresponding author e-mail: Andrew.Francis@mmu.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper presents the findings of the first empirical study of the experiences of young lawyers who have entered an increasingly uncertain profession following a highly competitive education and recruitment process. These ‘millennial lawyers’ are framed by a narrative of ‘difference’. This ‘difference’ is commonly articulated negatively and as a challenge to organisational and professional norms. However, our findings suggest a more complex reality. In its synthesis of work on structure and agency, with the temporal focus required by generational sociology, this paper advances an original approach to the analysis of organisational and professional change within contemporary legal practice. Drawing on new empirical research, it demonstrates that although our sample shares many field-level expectations, there is also considerable stress, unhappiness and discomfort. This is generated by a complex interaction between the lawyers’ expectations of practice, and the structuring properties of the field. Thus, the capacity for organisational and professional change is more comprehensively understood within a temporal frame. This paper challenges academic and professional paradigms of generational change within the legal field. It concludes with recommendations for legal educators and the profession which foreground the complexity of millennial lawyers’ expectations of practice.

Keywords

practiceprofession and ethicslegal educationgenerational change
Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 376 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Legal Scholars 2020

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Footnotes

†

We are indebted to the local Law Society for support and to all participants. Many thanks also to Professors Hilary Sommerlad and Margaret Thornton and to the reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts.

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103 The Hunger Games is a series of novels (and films) about a dystopian state within which children from different Districts take part in ‘Games’ – a fight to the death until only one remains.

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139 Millennials typically earn £8000 less during their 20s than the previous generation did at the same age: www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/stagnation-generation-the-case-for-renewing-the-intergenerational-contract.

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141 Sturges and Guest, ibid, at 459–460 highlight the relationship between expectations and staff turnover.

142 A finding mirrored by legal mental health charity, LawCare: see www.lawcare.org.uk/news/calls-to-lawyer-helpline-about-bullying-and-harassment-increase.

143 Collier, above n 129.

144 Ibid, at 64–65.

145 Sutton and Griffin, above n 118.

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149 It should be noted that some of those in management welcomed the opportunity to consider different models of working.

150 Many thanks to Hilary Sommerlad for discussion of this point.

151 In the participants’ advert we made it clear we were not unquestioningly using the term, but recognised its currency within the trade press.

152 There are some limited differences between Gen Xers and millennials, ‘indicating that the younger generations were more inclined to leave their organization than the older generation’: Costanza et al, above n 46, at 382.

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163 Aulakh et al, above n 73, p 18.

164 See further Worth, above n 146.

165 Collier, above n 93, at 51.

166 Archer, above n 12, p 71.

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169 Bleasdale and Humphreys, above n 57, pp 35–37.

170 Ibid, pp 65–66.

171 See Krakauer and Chen, above n 4, at 66 and 74–77.

172 See www.lawgazette.co.uk/commentary-and-opinion/law-students-and-junior-lawyers-need-more-support/5067873.article.