How millennial leaders will reshape law

Millennials – people born between 1981 and 1994 – had employers flummoxed when they started entering the workforce in the early 2000s. Maligned for their job-hopping, lazy, praise-seeking ways, older generations worried that millennial, or Gen Y, workers were more interested in eating avocado toast and wearing skinny jeans than building solid, sensible careers.

Fast forward two decades and the career trajectory of the average millennial has proved vastly different to their baby boomer or even Gen X predecessors. Long tenures and predictable pathways have given way to flexible careers shaped by rapid technological change, greater gender equity and evolving values around work-life balance.

With millennials beginning to enter their 40s and increasingly taking on leadership positions, understanding how this cohort will manage others is an emerging – and largely unanswered – question.

In historically hierarchical, traditional and male-dominated professions like law, there are signs that millennial leaders are set to reshape traditional management practices. Their legacy might be a legal profession that finally delivers on the promise of flexibility, adaptability and collaboration.

Beyond reductive stereotypes

Australian millennials came of age amid the rise of the internet, growing globalisation and far greater access to higher education. Older generations often saw this new crop of workers as soft, slack and far too focused on themselves; a cohort who forked out for expensive avocado toast breakfasts instead of saving for a house and who lacked the work ethic to stick it out in a job for longer than one or two years.

But millennials’ formative years were also shaped by the September 11 attacks, the global financial crisis, rapidly increasing housing prices, rising student debt and a far more casualised job market. Regular work became harder to come by, living costs grew and the world began to feel less safe.

Social researcher and demographer Mark McCrindle, who heads up market research firm McCrindle, says stereotypes about millennials are largely reductive and continue to fade as this generation ages into the peak family forming and income earning years.

“Millennials have adapted to their responsibilities in life, to their times, just as every generation before them did.”

Millennials now comprise almost 75 per cent of Australia’s workforce. McCrindle says fears about a ‘snowflake’ generation being unprepared to make sacrifices have proved unfounded, especially as many millennials are balancing caregiving and family responsibilities alongside shifting workplace norms. “Here they are bringing commitment to multiple roles, but they’re not easing off on the professionalism and on the expectations at work.”

According to Dr Felicity Bell, who is deputy director of UNSW’s Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession and a millennial, most of the criticisms directed to millennials in the workplace aren’t backed by research.

She says that in light of today’s deeper awareness of mental health and wellbeing, the perception of millennials as needy in the absence of positive feedback is understandable. Similarly, what was once criticised as job-hopping can now be seen as a sign of adaptability and a desire for purposeful, flexible work.

As the oldest millennials are only beginning to enter management roles, there is limited research examining their leadership style, Dr Bell explains.

McCrindle believes this generation is shaping up to make a positive impact: “Millennials are proving themselves. They’ll be fair and relational leaders – but not soft leaders.”

Collaboration and empowerment

Rachel Carter, head of global legal consulting platform Peerpoint for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, believes millennials are seeking more adaptable and purpose-driven careers in law. “They tend to be comfortable with technology, seeing it as an enabler, and prioritise work-life balance, personal development and wellbeing, both for themselves and their teams,” she says.

This translates to millennials who “lead with empathy, focusing on collaboration and team empowerment rather than traditional hierarchical structures”, Carter says. “They’re transparent in their communication and value feedback and continuous learning.”

For 42-year-old Philip Evangelou, a nasty altercation with a manager and ongoing bullying at a London-based firm inspired the lawyer to become the boss. “That experience led me to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be an employee ever again,” he says.

Evangelou now employs six staff at his Sydney-based commercial litigation firm OpenLegal, which he’s run outright since 2022. Evangelou says his management style is focused on “collaboration, innovation and progressive values”. He sees his role as helping his team to grown and learn, and he attempts to make meetings and other administrative processes interesting and engaging.

“We try and have more of a flatter structure, rather than have a focus on titles, and it’s quite collaborative,” he explains. “Originally, the vibe felt more like a startup, but now we’re a bit more mature and established in the market.”

Professor Michael Legg, Dr Bell’s colleague and director of the Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession at UNSW, says this approach is typical of emerging millennial leadership patterns in law.

“I think this is going to be their take on leadership: we can change, and we can improve,” he says.

Millennial lawyers’ experiences of beginning their careers in a more traditional, hierarchical environment and watching it evolve during the pandemic will also influence their attitudes and behaviours as leaders, Prof Legg says. “Particularly as a result of COVID, they’ve seen the ability of law firms to change, so they’re probably going to be leaders who believe things can be better.”

More female leaders

One of the most significant features of millennials in law is the sheer number of women. The profession has undergone dramatic feminisation over the last two decades, with the growth rate of female lawyers consistently higher than that of male lawyers since 1997. In 2018, for the first time female lawyers outnumbered males in every state and territory.

Dr Bell says it’s perhaps no surprise that millennial and female leaders in law share some of the same characteristics. “Being more collaborative in orientation and more willing to hear different viewpoints – not necessarily just striking out and making a decision on your own but really trying to get feedback from the whole organisation before deciding on a particular direction – those are all things that we could probably associate both with millennials and a more feminine style of leadership.”

However, women remain underrepresented in senior leadership roles in law due to persistent structural barriers, unconscious bias and the challenges of balancing career progression with caregiving responsibilities.

Assuming gender parity in the profession overall will lead to gender parity in leadership positions is a misnomer, says Sapphire Parsons, a 33-year-old Melbourne-based lawyer who works at a national firm.

“Just because more women are entering the profession doesn’t mean we’ll start to automatically see more millennial women in leadership. I don’t think it’s necessarily one plus one equals two in this instance,” she says, pointing to feminised industries like teaching and nursing where male leaders outnumber their female counterparts.

There is, however, evidence that a growing number of female millennial lawyers are stepping into informal leadership positions – which are shaping up to be a defining feature of the millennial legal career.

“It’s not enough to be an outstanding legal practitioner anymore. Millennial lawyers do a lot of what I call professional leadership, where they’re leading legal work and they’re coaching and mentoring junior lawyers,” explains Dr Deb Hann, who began her legal career more than 40 years ago and now leads Core EQ, which provides leadership training for lawyers.

“Because of their greater skills in technology and a shake-up in how we do our legal work, millennials have been able to lead a change in culture towards a more collaborative culture,” explains Dr Hann. She looked at formal and informal leadership roles that lawyers undertake as part of her PhD, which explored lawyers’ lifelong learning strategies in leadership.

Parsons began her legal career in 2019 and by 2021 had landed a senior associate role. But she says the impact of her leadership extends into the profession more broadly. She is co-chair of the law reform committee for Victorian Women Lawyers and has previously sat on the organisation’s work practices committee.

Parsons’ advocacy work contributed to new laws accepted last year in Queensland that regulate the prevention of workplace harassment – an Australian legislative first. “What we now want is for those same laws to be adopted through the rest of the country.”

She believes female millennial lawyers must have greater representation in both formal and informal leadership roles. “It’s a question of what type of profession do we want to create? Do we want to have a profession that is pale, male and stale, or do we want to have a profession that is truly reflective of diversity? My hope is the profession becomes more equal and more representative of the communities that it serves,” Parsons says.

A bridging generation

Many commentators believe millennial leaders are poised to be a key bridging generation between older generations who define success as achieving quantitative results and Gen Zs who are championing digital transformation and workplace wellbeing.

“This generation brings the best of both – that consensus approach, the listening to others, the understanding of holistic goals in life, but also expecting hard work, commitment and no compromise,” McCrindle says.

Legg says the evolution of law firms is also an important driver of millennial leadership traits. “As much as we talk about the characteristics of millennials, the characteristics of law firms will also shape millennials. The cuddly millennial that started out 10 years ago is going to be a little bit stronger and more robust in their approach as law firm practice will mean that they are conscious of making money and delivering for clients,” he says.

Carter believes law firms that create environments that value flexibility, innovation and purpose are best placed to harness the unique offering of millennial leaders. “This means offering career paths that accommodate different life stages and ambitions, investing in technology, and fostering cultures where they feel they can belong and be their authentic selves,” she says.

As a result, the profession is likely to become more flexible, diverse and tech enabled. “Millennials will push for greater work-life integration, more meaningful client relationships and a stronger focus on wellbeing and social impact,” Carter says.

“Over time, this could lead to a profession that is more agile, innovative and responsive to the needs of both clients and lawyers.”