Excerpt:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” So begins A Tale of Two Cities, the story of English barrister Sydney Carton, swept up in the currents of the French Revolution. Carton makes the ultimate sacrifice for his client, a French aristocrat, when he switches identities with him and loses his own head to the blade of the guillotine. Both the French and the American revolutionaries rejected traditional values based on monarchy and rule by divine right, which they replaced with values based on democracy and self-determination. The legal profession is experiencing its own version of generational conflict. Lawyers and law firms that want to continue to succeed will need to adopt new styles of communication, accommodate alternative career tracks, and expand mentor programs.
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When Ulysses went off to fight in the Trojan War, he left his trusted friend Mentor in charge of his son’s education. Thus “mentoring” came to mean
the passing on of skills, knowledge, and wisdom. Mentors help lawyers acquire knowledge and skills more quickly and more effectively. They pass on the true art of the practice of law. Having an effective mentoring program at your law firm can help overcome many generational conflicts.
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In 399 BC, Socrates went on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens and creating generational conflicts in the city. He questioned the established intellectual class of Athens, the statesmen, poets, and artisans, who thought themselves wise. Socrates proved these prominent Athenians were not wise. When his public questioning made them look foolish, they turned against him and created accusations of wrongdoing. A jury of Athenians found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death by ingestion of hemlock. Among the next generation of his students was Plato, who together with Aristotle went on to lay the foundations of Western philosophy, logic, math, and science.
There always have been and will continue to be generational differences. ...
Click to read the rest of "Irresistible Force Meets Immovable Object: Generational Conflict in the Legal Profession" (Wisconsin Lawyer).
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