A Whole New World

BARBARA J. DURKIN (durkinbj@ oneonta.edu) is Assistant Professor of Management at SUNY College at Oneonta and a recent graduate of Pace University School of Law. She was a member Professional Associations Government Law Schools Public Interest Organizations of the NYSBA Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession and has been a human resources Coordinate Training Skills Training Provide Theoretical Loan Forgiveness executive. The author is grateful Programs Learning to Lawrence B. Brennan, Jolanda Loan Forgiveness Provide Experiential Learning G. Jansen and Gary Munneke for Continuing Legal Assessment reviewing and commenting on an earlier version of this article. Education Continuing Legal Continuing Legal Education Education Loan Programs Continuing Legal Education A Whole New World Gigonomics, Human Resource Development and the Brave New Lawyer TRAINING By Barbara J. Durkin Introduction The New World of Gigonomics The traditional law firm model has undergone a perfect Once upon a time, a person worked for the same storm. Clients are demanding increased efficiency and employer, did a good job, stayed a very long time (maybe lower costs, refusing to pay for “armies” of junior 25 years) until he or she got old and then retired, probably associates to work on their litigation. Law firm leaders at age 62. Time passed and people began to live longer. It Law Firms Contract Lawyers Individual Lawyers and managers are clamoring for more profits at the same became acceptable to work for several organizations over time that costs, especially those related to labor, have the course of now-extended working lives, but there were Incentive for Public Interest Contribute Time Contribute Time increased dramatically. Associates, primarily those who still unwritten rules. If a person jumped from job to job, Training are of the Gen X and Millennial generations, are finding not staying at least five years or so, clearly something was Competency related to Financial Contribution and that their needs and values are not always consonant with wrong; employers shook their collective heads and put Tuition Reimbursement Compensation Tuition Reimbursement those of law firms. It is a challenging, but exciting, time the person’s job application in the “no” pile. to manage a firm and to practice law. It is, in many ways, Fast forward to 2011. No longer do employers promise “the end of the world as we know it.”1 continued employment in exchange for doing a good job. Corporate Universities Funding through Professional Responsibility What will this new world look like? The landscape A new generation of workers has entered the workforce, Grant Program Requirement to perform Pro Bono will be unrecognizable to those who have been isolated connected 24/7, lacking corporate loyalty engendered Compensation as a function of work for so long. The promised land of partnership, flowing by the paternalism of the past, ready to do what it takes training & competencies with milk and honey for those who have labored long to make a living. This model has been aptly dubbed Competency related to Compensation and hard in the trenches, is gone.2 In its place is a land of “Gigonomics” by Tina Brown.3 Gigonomics – what the Professional Responsibility and Promotion peaks and valleys with each person responsible for her rest of us used to call “patching it together to make a Requirement to perform Pro Bono own climb, for managing his own career. Lifelong, full- living” – has become a term of art used to describe the work time employment in one job will be a thing of the past, trend where even college-educated professionals cobble replaced by a string of simultaneous positions or “gigs,” together a string of jobs. These jobs, or “gigs,” are “the successive employers and, as people’s life spans expand, sum of a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, several career changes. The good news is that myriad and part-time bits and pieces, stitched together to make resources are available to help navigate and succeed in ‘the Nut’,” the amount needed to pay for basic life this new world. essentials.4 34 | September 2011 | NYSBA Journal.

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