At 48 years old, I am old enough to be your mother. And you should be ashamed of yourself. Here you are, coming to me for a legal job when you don’t know the first thing about RSS feeds, blogging (reading them, let alone writing them), Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube. And what’s more, you have no comprehension of the importance of these tools to my practice and seemingly no interest in learning how to use them.
Just out of law school, your skills are of minimal use to me. Nothing you research or write will be worthy of filing without significant oversight and feedback. And that’s okay.
But what I can’t abide is having to teach you how to tweet about current events. How to set up an RSS feed. How to track and stay on top of news from two or three industry blogs. Supposedly, you grew up on this stuff. So why do you need to take instructions from someone old enough to be your mother on how to use tools that should come as second nature?
Now Carolyn, who doesn't look a day over 35, Sought to cajole new lawyers into an epiphany, that what they lack in value as lawyers they ought bring in value as digital natives. She goes on to talk about various technological marketing pieces, which matter to her, but the core aspect of her rant is that young people ought to possess a skillset that old folks lack. So why don't they? And if they have it, why aren't they using it?
Over at The Puddle, n00bie lawyer Josh Camson responds in an open letter of his own to "Senior Lawyer," I am not a tech expert.
Its unclear whether Josh's argument is that he's not really as tech savvy as old lawyers think, or that he's here now as a lawyer and doesn't want to be relegated to the role of "the computer guy," If the former, it would be far more comprehensible. Just because a lot of kids spend time chatting up their friends on Facebook doesn't make them knowledgeable or competent to handle tech. Old folks, who are utterly clueless, may think they are, but that's just because they're utterly clueless.As you point out, I have grown up around technology. I had my first cell phone in 2000. I joined Facebook when it was only open to other college students. I joined Twitter briefly when it first came out, and even had a Blogger account at the end of my college career. During this time I was also trying to pass exams and figure out my life. Then I spent three years learning the law. I’ve spent the last two
figuring outstarting to figure out how to be a lawyer.In contrast, you’ve had the last twenty years to understand how law and technology fit together. You were already in law school when the Apple Macintosh was released. That means you’ve had the last thirty years to learn about new technologies as they develop. More importantly, you’ve been able to slowly incorporate those technologies into your practice. If you haven’t found a video solution that you like, or a system to stay up-to-date on industry developments, why should that be my problem? Why am I expected to have your solution?
One of the memes that are sold to "senior lawyers" in law firms is that they can slough off any tech issues onto the kids. The assumption is they all know that "stuff," and they can handle the firm's twitter needs without blinking. Bad news, guys. It's baloney. Any idiot can type words onto a screen, but that's not what tech is about. You didn't realize that? Bummer.
The kids realize that your expectations of their tech abilities are, ahem, overestimated. And to add insult to injury, when things don't work out the way you expect, like your new baby lawyer in charge of twitter isn't bringing in a million dollars of new business a week, who are you going to blame? They must be doing it wrong, since everybody knows that tech is the future, tech is the gravy train. All you need is some kid to twit for you and fabulous wealth is coming your way. Unless the kid screws up, of course.
But as much as new lawyers may not want to be pigeonholed as digital natives, you can't ignore the flip side of Carolyn's point. Your law chops aren't what you think they are. The senior lawyer is not only expected to pay you, but aside from making a decent cup of coffee (thank you, Keurig), you not only can't produce usable work yet, but suck time away to correct and teach you how to do things right. Until you can, you are a drain on the firm, on the senior lawyer. But thanks for the coffee.
This isn't a smack against new lawyers, per se. We were all new once, and before there was an internet to manage, there were brief cases to carry, pocket parts to insert, typewriter ribbons to change. We were new lawyers too, but we understood that an integral part of our job, a reason the senior lawyers was willing to give us money every week whether we performed good legal work or not, was because we did whatever we could to add value to their practice.
What we did not do was tell the nice person who paid us, "oh no, old man. I'm no coffee fetcher, no briefcase carrier, no pocketpart inserter. I'm a lawyer, and I damn well expect you to treat me with the respect I think I deserve." There were people who did this, and there was a name for those people: unemployed.
It's quite possible that the reason you bring nothing to the table when it comes to technology is that you have nothing to bring. If that's the case, man up and admit it. And if your senior lawyers is more tech savvy than you are, spend your quiet time at home learning how not to be the tech runt of the office, because it's frankly inexcusable today and will be an unacceptable impediment to your future as a lawyer.
And senior lawyers, no matter how youthful your appearance or what you thought of the Mac when it first came out, need to understand that tapping nonsense words into Facebook may be fun and kewl, but does not an IT expert make. Technological savvy is not a prerequisite for being young, and some don't have the chops for either law or technology. Sorry to burst your senior lawyer bubble.
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