Lazy Gen Z lawyers need more ‘hand-holding’ despite earning £180,000, according to leading law firm Gibson Dunn.
Their work-shy attitudes have forced the US-based firm to advertise for a professional support lawyer in their London office to help Gen Z employees with targeted learning.
Although some of their graduates earn sky-high six-figure wages, a job advert from the firm reports that since the Covid pandemic, more ‘hand-holding’ and ‘explaining’ is needed for ‘Gen Z’ workers.
The professional support lawyer will provide targeted training and individual coaching to make junior associates more efficient, the job listing says.
The job advert was first reported by legal blog Roll, which added that ‘the admission that younger lawyers require special measures reflects a commonly held sentiment among senior lawyers’.
Lawyers took to the website to report their gripes with their younger employees.
‘I had a first year trainee once who couldn’t accept they’d got the wrong answer’ and was ‘so butthurt they went to HR,’ one senior lawyer said. ‘Entitled doesn’t begin to describe it.’
‘When corrected with helpful explanations he would double down and insist he was right.’
US law firm Gibson Dunn advertised for a professional support lawyers to help with ‘handholding’ their Gen Z workers
Although their graduates earn sky-high wages of £180,000, a job advert from the firm reports that since the Covid pandemic, more ‘hand-holding’ and ‘explaining’ is needed for ‘Gen Z’ workers (file photo)
Other lawyers complained that their younger colleagues are ‘always late’ and ‘complain to HR’ when they are criticised (file photo posed by models)
Another said: ‘We had a trainee who wouldn’t start work before 9.30am and moaned if she had to do anything beyond 5.30pm.
‘She was slow to respond to emails and eventually went off sick with stress. She was binned, but god knows what she thought being a trainee in a City firm would entail.’
One senior lawyer was astonished when a younger colleague refused to work more than two all nighters a week when her parents were visiting.
A commenter added: ‘They seem genuinely surprised when asked to work evenings and weekends when a deal is on.’
Gen Z lawyers who are used to Zoom are ‘barely disguising their boredom in client meetings,’ one said.
Christopher Clarke, a specialist recruiter at Legal Search, told the Telegraph: ‘Any lawyer expecting to be paid £170k-plus will have a very short legal career.’
Gibson Dunn later removed any reference to Gen Z lawyers in the job listing, instead saying the support lawyer would help make junior associates ‘as efficient as possible’ through targeted training and individual coaching.
Gen Z lawyers who are used to Zoom are ‘barely disguising their boredom in client meetings,’ one lawyer said
Despite their perceived poor work ethic, London’s trainee lawyers are being asked to regularly work 70-hour weeks by US firms to justify starting salaries of more than £170,000, a survey has confirmed.
Research conducted by the website Legal Cheek found that young solicitors working for firms such as Weil, Gotshal and Manges reported working 67.5 hours on average over a normal five-day working week.
Researchers found that many junior lawyers at these demanding firms routinely finished their days after 10.30pm, with one junior solicitor claiming he ‘hadn’t seen sunlight in three months’.
Meanwhile, young lawyers are not alone in wanting better work-life balance.
Gen Z workers value work-life balance above wages and put a premium on ethical considerations, with four in 10 young British employees saying they have considered walking away from companies they consider ‘unethical, a survey by Co-operatives UK found.
And just one-in-ten Gen Z employees want to work full-time from the office, while a majority admit their generation is lazier than their parents, research published by the Times indicates.
