Effective Hands-On Training That Millennial Lawyers Embrace and Boomer Lawyers Approve

Law firm training programs are being squeezed by the return of an old problem to the new workplace ' the generation gap. Americans today “are just as likely now as they were during the turbulent 1960s to say there is a generation gap between young and old.” The Pew Research Center's February 2010 “Millennials ' A Portrait of Generation Next.” This generational chasm is forcefully felt when it comes to developing partner-approved, associate-desired training.

On the one side of the generational divide are the purse-string-holding, firm-controlling baby boomers who embrace 1970s-era top-down methods of legal training. On the other side are today's consumers of that training ' techno-savvy millennial lawyers who demand collaborative learning and resist forced injections of information. Caught in the middle are the people responsible for the programming.

Your firm can avoid the squeeze between the generations by using new technology and proven practical solutions that harmonize program design principles to bridge the gap between the generations. As practicing lawyers and legal trainers, we know the divide can be bridged with careful implementation of the four “C's” of customization, collaboration, context, and content.

The Chasm

Law firm training programs must come to grips with the workplace tension between the second largest generation, 78 million baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), and the largest generation in our history, 88 million Millennials (born between 1977 and 1997).

By 2014, the Millennials are projected to form 50% of the work force. Millennials were raised in a time of relative prosperity and grew up with technology as part of their daily lives. In Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott defines eight crucial characteristics for understanding the needs and expectations of this generation ' four of which we believe are critical to effective legal training ' asserting that Millennials:

• Want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.
• Love to customize and personalize their experiences.
• Are the “new” scrutinizers.
• Look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work.
• Want to find entertainment in their work, educational, and social lives.
• Are focused on collaboration and relationship building.
• Have a need for speed.
• Are innovators who constantly look for innovative ways to collaborate, entertain themselves, learn, and work.

If there is a rallying cry for Millennials, it is, “don't command, collaborate!” When Generations Collide, at 31. Ron Alsop, in The Trophy Kids Grow Up, advises, “never try to bully Millennials. They don't like an authoritarian, command-and-control style of management ' they prefer a collaborative, team-oriented environment.”

Many Boomers believe this is nonsense. Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman's When Generations Collide suggests that Boomers had to “fight and claw their way into the positions they held.” As products of individual triumph, Boomers have not embraced Millennials' values of customization and collaboration. In turn, Millennials find themselves resenting Boomer-imposed, top-down, strictly regimented training methodologies of the 1970s.

Bridging the Gap

The training style that Boomers invented is not embraced by the younger lawyers; however, time-tested core skills remain important. A consumer-driven training methodology must communicate the Boomers' core values in a way that can be embraced by the Millennials. By employing the “four C's” of customization, collaboration, context, and content in program design, firms can construct advocacy skills training that satisfies the Boomers' need for order, while embracing the Millennials' demand for collaboration.

Under this model, a workshop-driven program employs technological tools to begin the customization and collaboration process, and technology allows it to continue after the program ends. During the program, careful attention to context and content allows skills that Boomers would inject to instead be extracted from the younger lawyers' life experiences. This integrated approach provides the training that the Boomers insist upon, in a method that Millennials demand.

We follow this training model in our programming, and you too can embrace its ideals. First, employ Survey Monkey to customize the programming. All program content requires choices, and while you should control core skills, we let the consumer make the choice between other options. For example, participants vote between learning how to depose a witness on a document or on a conversation. Integrate their choice into the program, and use other delivery mechanisms to cover the content that could not fit into the program's time envelope

Second, embrace a training methodology that accentuates collaborative exercises. Always include brainstorming sessions, peer critiques, and daily “lessons learned.” Moving from a “talk at you” style to a “talk with you” style provides ownership to the participants, enhancing programming. Employing peer critiques of workshop performances creates the collaborative environment necessary for success.

Third, provide a learning context that extracts skills from their life experiences, rather than injects them. This is so easily accomplished. For instance, all of us know the conversational dodges used to avoid sensitive topics. Discuss those, and show associates to be sensitive to how that same tactic, employed by a clever witness, can ruin deposition transcripts.

Fourth, drive content by “edutainment.” Employ graphics, movies, YouTube clips, and popular culture for full sensory integration. A clip from the movie “Anatomy of a Murder” can provoke a serious ethics discussion a lot better than a dry hypothetical.

Finally, tie it all together by facilitating continued learning after the program ends. Web 2.0 social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn allow continued dialogue, and provide a platform for announcing short films addressing areas not fully covered during the workshops.

Conclusion

These tools, revolving around thoughtful customization, meaningful collaboration, careful attention to context, and an intense focus on content, will communicate what the Boomers demand, in a way that the Millennials will hear. You will bridge that gap.

Mark McCurdy and Suellen Wideman have led lawyer training programs across the United States over the last 15 years. Both are practicing attorneys in Maryland. This article is excerpted from a presentation given this summer by the authors to the Professional Development Consortium.

Law firm training programs are being squeezed by the return of an old problem to the new workplace ' the generation gap. Americans today “are just as likely now as they were during the turbulent 1960s to say there is a generation gap between young and old.” The Pew Research Center's February 2010 “Millennials ' A Portrait of Generation Next.” This generational chasm is forcefully felt when it comes to developing partner-approved, associate-desired training.

On the one side of the generational divide are the purse-string-holding, firm-controlling baby boomers who embrace 1970s-era top-down methods of legal training. On the other side are today's consumers of that training ' techno-savvy millennial lawyers who demand collaborative learning and resist forced injections of information. Caught in the middle are the people responsible for the programming.

Your firm can avoid the squeeze between the generations by using new technology and proven practical solutions that harmonize program design principles to bridge the gap between the generations. As practicing lawyers and legal trainers, we know the divide can be bridged with careful implementation of the four “C's” of customization, collaboration, context, and content.

The Chasm

Law firm training programs must come to grips with the workplace tension between the second largest generation, 78 million baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), and the largest generation in our history, 88 million Millennials (born between 1977 and 1997).

By 2014, the Millennials are projected to form 50% of the work force. Millennials were raised in a time of relative prosperity and grew up with technology as part of their daily lives. In Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott defines eight crucial characteristics for understanding the needs and expectations of this generation ' four of which we believe are critical to effective legal training ' asserting that Millennials:

• Want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.
• Love to customize and personalize their experiences.
• Are the “new” scrutinizers.
• Look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work.
• Want to find entertainment in their work, educational, and social lives.
• Are focused on collaboration and relationship building.
• Have a need for speed.
• Are innovators who constantly look for innovative ways to collaborate, entertain themselves, learn, and work.

If there is a rallying cry for Millennials, it is, “don't command, collaborate!” When Generations Collide, at 31. Ron Alsop, in The Trophy Kids Grow Up, advises, “never try to bully Millennials. They don't like an authoritarian, command-and-control style of management ' they prefer a collaborative, team-oriented environment.”

Many Boomers believe this is nonsense. Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman's When Generations Collide suggests that Boomers had to “fight and claw their way into the positions they held.” As products of individual triumph, Boomers have not embraced Millennials' values of customization and collaboration. In turn, Millennials find themselves resenting Boomer-imposed, top-down, strictly regimented training methodologies of the 1970s.

Bridging the Gap

The training style that Boomers invented is not embraced by the younger lawyers; however, time-tested core skills remain important. A consumer-driven training methodology must communicate the Boomers' core values in a way that can be embraced by the Millennials. By employing the “four C's” of customization, collaboration, context, and content in program design, firms can construct advocacy skills training that satisfies the Boomers' need for order, while embracing the Millennials' demand for collaboration.

Under this model, a workshop-driven program employs technological tools to begin the customization and collaboration process, and technology allows it to continue after the program ends. During the program, careful attention to context and content allows skills that Boomers would inject to instead be extracted from the younger lawyers' life experiences. This integrated approach provides the training that the Boomers insist upon, in a method that Millennials demand.

We follow this training model in our programming, and you too can embrace its ideals. First, employ Survey Monkey to customize the programming. All program content requires choices, and while you should control core skills, we let the consumer make the choice between other options. For example, participants vote between learning how to depose a witness on a document or on a conversation. Integrate their choice into the program, and use other delivery mechanisms to cover the content that could not fit into the program's time envelope

Second, embrace a training methodology that accentuates collaborative exercises. Always include brainstorming sessions, peer critiques, and daily “lessons learned.” Moving from a “talk at you” style to a “talk with you” style provides ownership to the participants, enhancing programming. Employing peer critiques of workshop performances creates the collaborative environment necessary for success.

Third, provide a learning context that extracts skills from their life experiences, rather than injects them. This is so easily accomplished. For instance, all of us know the conversational dodges used to avoid sensitive topics. Discuss those, and show associates to be sensitive to how that same tactic, employed by a clever witness, can ruin deposition transcripts.

Fourth, drive content by “edutainment.” Employ graphics, movies, YouTube clips, and popular culture for full sensory integration. A clip from the movie “Anatomy of a Murder” can provoke a serious ethics discussion a lot better than a dry hypothetical.

Finally, tie it all together by facilitating continued learning after the program ends. Web 2.0 social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn allow continued dialogue, and provide a platform for announcing short films addressing areas not fully covered during the workshops.

Conclusion

These tools, revolving around thoughtful customization, meaningful collaboration, careful attention to context, and an intense focus on content, will communicate what the Boomers demand, in a way that the Millennials will hear. You will bridge that gap.

Mark McCurdy and Suellen Wideman have led lawyer training programs across the United States over the last 15 years. Both are practicing attorneys in Maryland. This article is excerpted from a presentation given this summer by the authors to the Professional Development Consortium.