By DAVID ROSENFELD
Portland Business Journal

There's a generational divide in the workplace. Many young people are leaving jobs, without any prospects for others, because they just aren't happy.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than at law firms, where a tenacious work ethic has traditionally been paramount.

Salary alone - often starting at more than $100,000 - isn't always enough to retain good lawyers for the seven years that it takes, on average, to become a partner. Young attorneys are looking for greater purpose even in their first years on the job. And if they don't get it, they're more prone, compared to previous generations, to move on.

A recent study by the National Association for Law Placement's NALP Foundation looked at 118 law firms nationwide and found that 19 percent of their associate attorneys, or 2,815, left in 2006, amounting to two-thirds of the firms' hiring. Of those who left, 15 percent, or about 420, left within two years and 75 percent, or 2,100, left within five years.

Chalk it up to a myriad of possible reasons: generational impatience, entitlement, the lack of economic hardships or an honest pursuit of greater meaning.

Law firms are starting to wise up. They are giving new hires more responsibility, mentoring and meaning to their careers. Firms invest considerable resources into training young associates, so keeping them onboard is important.

"You get people in general who want to do well and be successful, but they don't want every dollar off the top of the table,"said Tom Johnson, hiring partner for the Portland, Ore., office of Perkins Coie LLP.

The issue is largely generational, said Johnson, 36, who made partner four years ago.

"When our parents went to a company, they expected to be there their whole lives. I don't think the generation of people coming out of law school now feels the same way."

To better understand the needs of young recruits, more law firms within the past couple of years have created professional management positions, something other industries adopted much earlier.

Dina Glassman, manager of professional development and recruitment at Perkins Coie, can identify with the sentiments of her young contemporaries. Glassman graduated from New York University law school in 1998. She worked at a New York firm for a few years before taking a pay cut to live in Portland.

She practiced at Perkins for more than four years before she finally told her boss it wasn't working. Being a lawyer, she had found, just wasn't for her.

"I learned that I was more interested in solving problems of the interpersonal kind," Glassman said.

And so the firm adapted her role and put her on a part-time schedule to spend more time with her family.

Common observations about the younger generation - that they have an aversion to working hard - show misunderstanding, she said.

"To the extent (young lawyers) are asked to endure pain, they need to see a true reward and something that makes sense to them," Glassman said. "We're not willing to burn the midnight oil for something that will pay off in a decade. Today, people want to feel like they matter. To people who are much older, it surprises them to the extent to which younger people aren't at all thinking about partnership."

Law firms, meanwhile, are giving young associates greater responsibility. That means having associates conduct depositions, go to court and work directly with clients as opposed to being locked in a room all day reviewing documents.

Many older partners thought the turnover rate among associates, which began to stand out about eight years ago, was just a blip on the radar, said Linda Green Pierce, president of Northwest Legal Search Inc., a placement service. But now they know it's here to stay.

"In 2001, people shrugged and raised their eyebrows because they thought it was a moment in time and we'd get through it," Pierce said. "Now that they realize it's not just a couple of people, it's a lot of them, and there isn't a huge pool of people to go to, now they have to adjust."

At the same time, law firms expect more out of their attorneys. Twenty years ago, lawyers put in between 1,400 and 1,600 billable hours a year, said Pierce, whereas firms today expect roughly 1,800 billable hours.

Pierce said a majority of the dissatisfaction she hears comes from women.

"They're pressing those law firms for more work/life balance and more flexible work structures. They say there is inadequate training and poor communication."

Paul Burton of Vision Mechanix LLC, a professional development consulting service, says some attrition is good attrition.

"It may be a wrong fit. There may be lifestyle changes," he said. "It's not necessarily that the work environment is bad."

"There also might be more of an entrepreneurial bent where people go off and start small practices of their own," said Wally Van Valkenburg, Portland managing partner for Stoel Rives LLP.