Millennial lawyers need feedback from supervising attorneys on a project basis — not just once or twice a year in scheduled reviews.  That is well-established.  People in positions like mine hear it all the time, and we know how important feedback is to junior lawyers — especially those who were raised with an abundance of feedback and mostly praise.

What does not get as much attention is the critical failure by law firms to revise review policies and mentoring efforts to meet the feedback needs of young lawyers.   As I have stated to law firm and bar association audiences time and time again, that failing is very risky.  Young lawyers travel light and will relocate over issues like failure to mentor — or just plain not showing enough interest in their career paths.

For those senior lawyers whose response is “don’t care” — and I have met some of them — my response is that they will care after they discover how expensive it is to replace talent.

Nicole Abboud hits the issue square on the head in her recent video on the subject.  I like what Nicole is doing as a contributor to the Attorney at Work project, and I also like that she had me as a guest recently on her The Gen Why Lawyer podcast to discuss millennial lawyers.  Check out the May 31, 2019 episode on The Gen Why Lawyer website to listen to our discussion.

Nicole is thoughtful and devoted to raising issues that are being glossed over by others in the profession.  In this case, she uses her own experience as an associate lawyer to take a deep dive into what it is like to have your work product ignored.  Take a look at the video.  My guess is that you will be able to relate to the anxiety and damage to self-esteem and confidence about your career choice that result from this lack of feedback.  And it is so unnecessary.

Times change.  Law practices should do the same.  What worked before, does not work now.  Even if senior lawyers do not think that the degree of feedback millennials need is necessary, IT IS what millennials need.  And the need won’t go away.  Millennials were raised with an abundance of attention paid to them and in an age of instant gratification made possible by new technologies.  They are the product of their times.

Often when I am addressing senior lawyers, who I know are challenged to understand or even appreciate millennials, I remind them of their contribution to the very thing about which they complain.  Many of those lawyers are parents of millennials.  Bingo!  Bring on the March of the Helicopter Parents!  They hovered, and they smothered and, yes, they made sure everyone got a trophy.  Distancing themselves from the result now seems a bit silly and disingenuous.

Rather than avoid the issue, they should face it straight on and become the leaders we need for a better future.  They should park their judgment genes on the office shelf and get busy training a new generation of lawyers who also will become a new generation of law firm leaders.  Their numbers alone make that a certainty.

So I say to law firm leaders, pay attention to these young lawyers.  Mentor them.  Give them feedback.  Show some real interest in them.  Learn their names, and call them by name.  Invite them to lunch.  It will take a small amount of effort compared to the potential benefits.  And you might actually enjoy doing for these young people what someone did for you in the day.

If you do your job right, it is an investment in the future of your law firm.  And the young lawyers of today will be equipped to become the effective law firm leaders of tomorrow.

If you are a lawyer just beginning your career, you probably don’t spend a lot of time worrying about origination credit.  In fact, maybe you never heard of the concept.  That makes sense.  You have a lot of other things to worry about that affect you on a daily basis in pursuit of improving your skills and becoming the best lawyer you can be.

But there is a difference between “worrying about” and “being informed about.”  As far as I am concerned, every private practice lawyer, regardless of experience, needs to at least be familiar with the concept of origination credits.  To be uninformed about them is to be unfamiliar with one of the things rocking the legal world at this point in time.

Origination credit is a lot what it sounds like.  For past generations, the lawyer, who brings the client to the firm, gets some credit for future work done for the client even if he or she never spends another hour toiling away on work for that client.

So, a lawyer can “originate” the client but never work on the client’s matters again and still lay claim to a part of the proceeds generated by the client work.  And on a permanent basis.

The result is that the lawyers currently working on a client matter are not getting credit for all of the time billed because the originating lawyer, who is not working on the matter at all, is skimming off the top based on the origination event and may even be receiving the bulk of the compensation.

If that sounds unfair to you, you are in the company of many others who believe this is an antiquated concept and needs revisiting.  In fact, this alleged unfairness is at the heart of some of the very visible gender and diversity discrimination law suits pending against Big Law today.

To learn more about this concept and from the perspective of an in-house lawyer, see https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2019/09/02/change-at-the-start/.

In that article, you will read about efforts by in-house lawyers to assure that the relationship partners, who actually work on their matters, receive the compensation credit they deserve.  You will read about the frustration of in-house lawyers, who discover that lawyers they never have met or dealt with, are receiving part of the fees paid — fees that otherwise would go to the relationship partners that these in-house lawyers deal with on a daily basis.

You will also read comments from seasoned partners, who have benefited from origination credits throughout their careers but who also see the unfairness of the system.  Like this comment from Patricia Gillette, who I know and admire:

“[The system of origination credits} ensconces lawyers in a position and rewards them over and over again, and it creates silos rather than teams.  You can get credit for the rest of your life; it doesn’t give room for others.”

This is not to say that origination credit is not important or that the concept should be thrown out as with the proverbial baby with the bath water.  But a compromise where the relationship partner shares in some of the origination credit may be in order.  That would seem fair.

And fundamental fairness should underlie everything we do in the law.  Former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said it best so many years ago, and I agree!