A Look at the Multi-Generational Legal Workforce

In any workplace, conflicts are inevitable. This reality is apparent in law firms and other legal employers. In order to understand and resolve this conflict, it’s important to look at the types of people working in the environment, and how their worldviews play a role in such disagreements.

Employers are also facing the reality that they’ve now got four generations working together under one roof. Although there’s wide variation within each generation, understanding the background stories of each generation and the preferences each has developed can help managers and business owners build a workplace that’s more harmonious and functional. In a series of posts on About.com, Alison examined each generation and how to resolve workplace conflict. She started with the four types of generations currently in the legal workplace.

• Traditionalists in the Legal Workplace: The Traditionalist Generation (sometimes referred to as the Silent or Greatest Generation) are important to understand because they built many of the institutions that exist today, and some are still around as senior partners and judges with senior status.
• Baby Boomers in the Legal Workplace: The Baby Boomers are the children of the post-World War II boom period, born between 1946 and 1964. Boomers grew up in a time of mass middle-class affluence and had time and energy for self-actualization, while the Traditionalists’ values of conformity and loyalty started to fall apart.
• Gen X in the Legal Workplace: Generation X is often characterized as the misunderstood slacker generation. They grew up in a world where divorce was becoming normal, women were entering the workplace in record numbers, globalization was accelerating, and downward mobility was commonplace.
• Millennials/Gen Y in the Legal Workplace: Millennials are a very wanted generation, when child rearing came roaring back in style in the mid-1980s and “helicopter parents,” who remain deeply involved in every aspect of their children’s lives well into adulthood, represent the new parenting norm.

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