Q&A: Jordan Furlong – "Very few firms are giving their youngest lawyers active client exposure and responsibility"

In this Q&A, Law21 founder Jordan Furlong, the author of a report for legal resourcing business Lawyers on Demand called The Rise of the Millennial Lawyer, considers the repercussions for law firms of the growing power of millennials as lawyers and clients.

Your report indicates that millennials are already having a significant impact on the culture of law firms and how they operate. How are mainstream, traditional firms responding to this change and is the main impact at this stage restricted to new, boutique firms that are challenging market norms? 

“My sense is that most law firms are more preoccupied with the lawyers at the other end of the demographic spectrum. Succession planning – well, actually, succession crisis is probably more apt at this point – is a serious concern for firms that are seeing their top performers reach the end of their careers and don’t have good plans for what happens after their departure. But I am seeing a small number of firms pay a reasonable amount of attention to millennials, including arranging intensive leadership and business development training for the most promising young members of the firm. All the same, training can be like watching a video about swimming – what millennials really need is to get into the water and swim. Very few firms are giving their youngest lawyers active client exposure and responsibility and, perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to make mistakes because that’s inevitable and necessary for their growth. I worry that many firms will wait until the Baby Boomers have left before they really look closely at their millennials – and that it may be too late at that point.”

The multi-disciplinary firm you describe in the report sounds sophisticated and a model that requires considerable leadership skills. Will there still be a place for small suburban law firm in this new era?

“I certainly think so. If anything, suburban firms should thrive because they’re going to be closer and more convenient to the individual and small business clients – and sometimes even bigger clients – that they want to serve. I taught a course about 21st-century law firms to students, and one of the things I told them was not to underestimate the value of two words: ample parking. Suburbs are going to change in the next few decades, both in Australia and elsewhere, as cars become less essential to daily life, and suburbs really are the creatures of the automobile. But location matters, and if you’re located close to the clients you want to serve, you’re already a ‘neighbour’, and that counts.”

How should traditional firms respond to the changes outlined in your report, including the fact that today’s clients increasingly want more affordability and choice, customisation of service and greater convenience?

“Pay attention to your millennial lawyers! Take their concerns seriously – if you roll your eyes when someone says ‘work-life balance’ you’re doing it wrong. Give them responsibility – pair them up with their opposite generational numbers on the client side, and suggest that they jointly come up with a ‘legal issues forecast’ for five to 10 years down the road. This way, you’re also paying attention to the millennial clients, who as I argue in my report are going to be at least as important as the millennials who work for you. Forget any notion of paying lip service to this generation – it’s too late for that.”

The billable hour has been hanging on for grim life? Is it finally going to die in this new era?

“The billable hour, I’ve come to believe, will be around until shortly after our sun goes nova. It’s almost impossible to kill – and that should tell us something about the value that at least some clients see in it. But as American consultant Bruce MacEwen wisely observed several years ago, ‘The market share of the billable hour has peaked.’ Fewer and fewer legal matters are based wholly on the billable hour every year, and as more new suppliers continue to enter the market in the coming years, more pricing competition and pricing options will appear. The billable hour will never die, but it will become increasingly irrelevant – just another option in the pricing portfolio occasionally called upon.”

In a new world of choice for millennial clients, how should law firms create long-term relationships?

“Well, they could start by recognising that the ‘client relationship’ is called that because it belongs to the client, not the lawyer. Far too many lawyers consider their ‘client relationships’ to be part of their personal inventory, and view the client not primarily as a person or company that would benefit from assistance, but as a source of revenue. Among an older generation of clients, especially on the corporate side, this belief holds true as well, though it’s more often implicitly accepted rather than explicitly stated. Where I think the millennial generation will shake things up is in the reclamation of the relationship from their lawyers. Most millennial clients will not have worked in a law firm before, or will not have grown up in an era in which lawyers were accorded elite status. They will not concede any power to their lawyers that they don’t wish to concede. And one of the first places you’ll see this is in succession, as mentioned earlier. Law firms are accustomed to ‘informing’ their clients that Lawyer A has left and Lawyer B will now be handling their affairs. Millennial clients will be likely to respond, ‘Hang on. Changing a lawyer is an excellent time for us to re-examine and reset this entire relationship. Come see us next Tuesday and we’ll tell you what we have in mind.’ That, I can tell you, will be a brave new world.”

In the report, you remark that “straight white males” will no longer be the default leadership profile within firms. What do you expect to see in years to come in terms of this new profile?

“What I expect to see is the gradual ‘de-lawyering’ of law firms, as automation and outsourcing replace junior associates, and more than a few partners, and ‘non-lawyer’ professionals in operations, pricing, data analysis and technology assume a greater role in the firm’s leadership and management. As this process continues, law firms will start to more closely resemble other professional business and companies, which don’t suffer from law’s deeply entrenched systemic discouragement of women and people of colour. Large corporate clients, which treat diversity with deadly seriousness, will accelerate this trend. This will take a while, no question, and progress will not be uniform. But law firms are fooling themselves if they think their overwhelmingly white male workforce is giving them access to the largest and best pool of skills and talent.”

You note that the legal market is changing from a dormant, low-tech, individualistic system to a dynamic, high-tech, collaborative one. In response, what should universities – which are already under fire for producing too many graduates with too few real skills – be doing to develop the next generation of talent?

“How much time do we have? Our systems and institutions of lawyer preparation don’t necessarily need an entire teardown and reconstruction, but it’s not far from that. If law schools want to start somewhere, they should start with clients – both the ones who are now hiring lawyers and the many, many would-be clients who aren’t. What legal needs do clients and potential clients have? Are they being met? If so, are they being met effectively and accessibly? And if not, what kind of people with what kinds of skills can solve this problem? Ask and answer those questions, and redesign your cultures and curricula to produce people who can meet that challenge. That’s what law schools should be doing right now.”

Some analysts are quite downbeat about the future of the law given the changes described in the report. How about you?

“Perhaps surprisingly, I’m not downbeat at all. I think the legal market is going to get better, year after year, for several years to come. I think more people and businesses will get the help they need, even and especially if they don’t currently realise they need help or that they can get it from the law. Solutions will become more affordable and more conveniently available; choice will be widespread. Technology will play a significant role in this. Now, that’s not to say that lawyers will reap all the benefits of this improvement – not that many will, mostly those who adapt early, move quickly, and are lucky. But as Richard Susskind says, law does not exist to provide a living for lawyers. It exists for the people and the business and the society that need it. Lawyers can be part of that market, if we want, but we need to remember why we’re in this in the first place. We are here to serve our clients, not the other way around.”

Jordan Furlong is a speaker, author, and legal market analyst who forecasts the impact of changing market conditions on lawyers and law firms. He has given presentations to audiences in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia to law firms, state bars, courts and legal associations. Jordan is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation. He writes regularly about the changing legal market at his website, www.law21.ca.