Gen Y Women Saying "No Thank You" to Big Law

It's no surprise that Gen Y women are saying, "No Thank You," to Big Law and everything that goes with it, big salaries, partnership opportunities.  They are not willing to make the sacrifices those before them made in order to climb in this, quite frankly, archaic system.

I've talked about  Gen Y as Entrepreneur  but now thanks to Denise Howell at Bag and Baggage we uncover a recent article in California Lawyer telling us that Gen Y women see a huge gap between their work/life desires and current female partners who have sacrificed everything to be a partner.  New lawyers are saying through words and action, "this is not what I want in my life and I'm not willing to sacrifice the way you did.  The prize just isn't worth it."  More succinctly, "I actually want a life."

They aren't defecting, they are simply not entering the Big Law firms at all choosing solo and small firm options instead.  As pointed out, there will have to be a radical change in the way law firms operate in order to get these women (and more and more men) to consider Big Law once, again.  Throwing money at them is no longer the answer.  No amount of money can make up for lost years, lost opportunities at having a family or lost time spent with the family we have.

We have turned into a society of consumers so bent on consuming material goods, the bigger house, the better car, the newest this and that, we sell our souls to feed the monster called excessive consumption.  How about doing without a few material things, live in a smaller house, drive our car a few more years.  Maybe we all could actually get to pick and choose our existence because we are not drowning in consumer debt.

The concept of reducing overhead isn't limited to just reducing the costs of running our solo practice.  If we trimmed the fat on personal overhead maybe we could have more work freedoms as well.

We will continue to see articles like this springing up everywhere.