Younger lawyers ‘want to pick and choose’ more ethical clients, complain older heads
Younger lawyers are asking to duck out of work on clients who clash with their ‘ethical’ standards, a new survey has revealed.
Senior City lawyers told City PM they are seeing tension between the young and older lawyers due to their “attitude towards working practices”.
Fresh data conducted by Obelisk Support published today stated that nearly two-thirds of junior lawyers think their employers should allow them to refuse to work on certain matters for ethical reasons.
The report revealed that fewer than one in five of these young lawyers are able to turn down work they fear clashes with their own moral code.
“There is a serious problem in the market with the junior end,” says a City partner adding that there is a real shift of when asked to do something younger lawyers “only desire to do work that interests them.”
“They want to pick and choose,” the partner added.
This partner also expressed that “the woke agenda gets pushed a little too far” as they suggested that “we all have views on things but we have to put them to one side and get on with the work and be professional.”
According to the report, issues like sustainability, climate change and ‘purpose’ are increasingly top of the mind for the next generation of lawyers.
The report highlighted that three-quarters of junior lawyers agree or strongly agree that they would not join an organisation whose values did not match their own, even if they were offering more money.
A senior legal head explained that younger lawyers are “looking for different things in life”, observing that younger lawyers want to be in a coffee shop on their iPad, working “three days a week”.
The senior leader warned that law firms may have a problem in the future as “junior people don’t want partnership or risk”.
Speaking in the report, a law associate described a toxic mindset at firms and asked “Why can’t the mindset be ‘I worked under terrible working conditions so you don’t have to’?”
Another older lawyer pointed out that senior lawyers don’t know what people in their mid-20s want for their future but added that those in their mid-20s “don’t know either.”