“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”
Good Morning Folks,,
Telecommunications was always and still is the backbone of any service business.
Smartphones, iPads, BlackBerries, Facebook, LinkedIn—they’re revolutionizing the practice of law. But not everyone has cottoned to this technology. There is a technology generation gap, and bridging it requires recognizing and respecting how attorneys young and old use technology to do their jobs.
Ted Schwartz just got an iPhone, he tells Matthew Malamud for the American Association for Justice.
“It’s terrific!” the 66-year-old attorney from Philadelphia exclaimed, ticking off all the ways he uses it: “as a phone, obviously, but also to send and receive e-mails, and for driving directions.” His voice conveys the astonishment of someone who remembers when making a mobile phone call meant stepping into a booth to use a pay phone."
Communications technology has changed since the days when Schwartz clerked in a law office during law school in 1966. Back then, law offices still had rooms with telephone switchboards where operators manually connected calls by switching out and plugging in numerous wires.
According to WikiPedia, "A telephone switchboard is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network or in enterprises to interconnect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between the subscribers or users, or between other exchanges. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, and was operated by one or more persons, called operators who either used electrical cords or switches to establish the connections.
The electromechanical automatic telephone exchange, invented by Almon Strowger in 1888, gradually replaced manual switchboards in central telephone exchanges starting in 1919 when the Bell System adopted automatic switching, but many manual branch exchanges remained operational during the last half of the 20th century in offices, hotels, or other enterprises. Later electronic devices and computer technology gave the operator access to an abundance of features. In modern businesses, a private branch exchange (PBX) often has an attendant console for the operator, or an auto-attendant, which bypasses the operator entirely.
The first telephones in the 1870s were rented in pairs which were limited to conversation between those two instruments. The use of a central exchange was soon found to be even more advantageous than in telegraphy. In January 1878 the Boston Telephone Dispatch company had started hiring boys as telephone operators. Boys had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behaviour (pranks and cursing) was unacceptable for live phone contact,[1] so the company began hiring women operators instead. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Boston Telephone Dispatch hired Emma Nutt as the first woman operator. Small towns typically had the switchboard installed in the operator's home so that he or she could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts."
“I remember clerking one day,” Schwartz said, “and there was no one to operate the switchboard so they asked me to be the telephone operator. I, of course, had all of three minutes of training on this thing. The lawyers were on the phone—some were talking with clients in Hong Kong and California. You can imagine what happened. I pulled the plugs and I had the client in Hong Kong talking to the client in California while the lawyers in one office were talking to the lawyers down the hall. They came out of their offices screaming.”
Today’s attorneys don’t have to rely on a switchboard, and they aren’t tethered to an office. They have cell phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, and tablet computers. They e-mail, instant message, text message, blog, tweet, and update their Facebook pages.
In law firms’ attempts to go paperless, they’re relying more on devices like the iPad, which can be used in the office and the courtroom. They’re also moving into cloud computing, which requires less information technology infrastructure and frees up office space by moving data storage to Internet-based servers. These technologies also enable lawyers to work from anywhere, not just the office, because they can access files via the Internet.
But not everyone feels the same way about the technology at his or her disposal. A generational conflict is at play, and technology is at the center of the fray.
Rather than making things easier, technology sometimes frustrates communication between legal professionals young and old. Instead of being a communication conduit, tools like e-mail and text messages can be an impediment, which is why the different generations need to constantly work to resolve their differences.
For the first time, four generations are working alongside one another. The WWII Generation (or Silent Generation), born before 1945, comprises five percent of today’s workforce. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, make up the largest share of the workforce at 38 percent. Generation Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, are 32 percent, and Generation Yers (or Millennials), born between 1980 and 2000, are 25 percent.
Members of each generation tend to share common perspectives on workplace issues, including communication,1 and each generation has divergent attitudes toward technology in the workplace. A member of the WWII Generation, for example, may prefer to correspond by memo, letter, or personal note, while a Baby Boomer is more apt to reach out by telephone or personal interaction. Generation Xers and Yers are most likely to send coworkers voicemails, e-mails, instant messages, or text messages.2 These two groups rely heavily on social networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, though mostly in their personal lives.
Take Schwartz, for example. His iPhone is the first mobile device he’s owned that is capable of sending and receiving work e-mail. His colleagues, including his Generation X colleague Pamela Lee, had been prodding him to get one for some time. “I can’t live without my iPhone!” Lee said, perplexed by how she ever managed without a smartphone. “Technology has made things easier.”
Schwartz, on the other hand, is a little less enthusiastic. “It is a convenience, I will tell you that, and it keeps me in touch. But it is a curse because it keeps me in touch. Being connected 24/7 has its drawbacks.”
He is a typical Baby Boomer. They weren’t born into a digital world and aren’t as comfortable with today’s gadgetry.3 Boomers tend not to consider ubiquitous technology-related products and services like Facebook.
However, Generation Y member Drew LaFramboise, who is only as old as the Apple Macintosh computer, thinks of today’s technology as an extension of himself. “I just don’t function as well without it,” said the new attorney from Columbus, Ohio.
Natasha Patel, a career adviser with Columbia University Law School, sees a gap between older partners and younger associates when it comes to knowing when to use electronic communication.
“You’ve got a generation that communicates everything online and a generation that doesn’t rely on electronic communication as its sole method to communicate,” said Patel. If associates want to advance, they’ll need to “meet the partners at their level,” she advises young lawyers. This means forging relationships the old-fashioned way, by regularly meeting with partners and speaking to them in person when issues arise, not just shooting off an e-mail, according to Patel.
Patel also sees a problem with young associates feeling isolated in the work environment, which may be attributable in part to electronic communication. This isolation in turn affects retention. “They are behind a computer in their offices most of the day. And though e-mail is the easiest mode of communication, they should feel comfortable enough to go knock on the partner’s door and strike up a conversation,” she said.
Generation X member Sonia Chaisson of Los Angeles said she is more likely to pick up the phone to speak with an older colleague than to send an e-mail or a text. She also said she sometimes forgets that older people aren’t as hip to the various language shortcuts that younger people use in e-mail and text messages, such as TTYL (talk to you later) or BTW (by the way). “I have to remind myself to write everything out in full sentences when I’m communicating to older adults,” she said.
Betty Barrett, an associate professor of sociotechnical systems with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agrees with Patel. “I advise my students to be aware of the fact that they are working in a world where the authority figures have different expectations and different sets of behavior patterns,” she said.
But that is not to say Baby Boomers are off the hook. Barrett thinks that each generation needs to recognize and respect that there are differences among them. Baby Boomers need to understand that younger generations think of mobile communications technology as an extension of who they are and what they do; multitasking is second nature to them, Barrett contended.
“I’m of an older generation that was brought up to pay attention to whoever was speaking to you and that a sign of respect was putting your work down when being spoken to,” she said. “Young people increasingly don’t have those values, and that is where we’re seeing conflict.”
Barrett spoke of a manager who hired several young workers. “They were on their cell phones all the time, this manager told me,” she recounted. “He wanted to know how bad it would be to take away the use of their cell phones during the workday.” She warned against it. “It’s something they’ve grown up with. They’re going to panic—they’re going to have a physical reaction to not having that cell phone. Students are coming out of college today with their phones in their hands all the time—it’s part of them.”
Baby Boomers also should recognize that younger generations expect feedback instantaneously. “I will get frustrated if I e-mail someone and they don’t get back to me right away,” Lee admitted.
Just because older generations are less likely to depend on technology the way younger generations do doesn’t mean they eschew technology altogether. Let’s dispense with a stereotype: Most veteran legal professionals today know how to use a computer. Yes, they may still remember the days of typewriters and mimeographs, but they’ve kept up with the changing technology. Still, there is a clear generation gap when it comes to adopting and using new technology and applications.4
For example, although just two-fifths of all legal professionals say they use mobile devices in the courtroom, almost three-quarters of Generation Yers do.5 About half of Generation Xers and just 23 percent of Baby Boomers use mobile devices in the courtroom.
The generations also diverge in their attitudes toward using technology. Compare Schwartz and LaFramboise: Schwartz sees technology as helpful, while LaFramboise sees it as something that’s necessary.
“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”
While two-thirds of Baby Boomers think it’s impolite or distracting to use a laptop or PDA during a meeting, just 57 percent of Generation Yers think it’s impolite and even fewer (49 percent) think it’s distracting.
Not surprisingly, the percentage of adults who use electronic tools, such as laptop computers and iPads, trails off with age. For example, 70 percent of Generation Yers own a laptop, while just 46 percent of Baby Boomers do.
Whereas present-day law firms are confronting technology and social media, the law firms of the future will have to confront this new dynamic.
“Young people in many ways, especially the very young,” Barrett said, “are developing earlier and earlier this capability to multitask and interact in an electronic environment, and that’s changing how they are. But that evolutionary change is going to be much slower than the change in technology, so that imbalance is going to always cause some serious dynamics in how the generations perceive each other and their interaction with technology.”
As telephone exchanges converted to automatic (dial) service, switchboards continued to serve specialized purposes. Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a toll call. In large cities, there was often a special number, such as 112, which would ring the long-distance operator directly. Elsewhere, the subscriber would ask the local operator to ring the long-distance operator.
The long distance operator would record the name and city of the person to be called, and the operator would advise the calling party to hang up and wait for the call to be completed. Each toll center had only a limited number of trunks to distant cities, and if those circuits were busy, the operator would try alternate routings through intermediate cities. The operator would plug into a trunk for the destination city, and the inward operator would answer. The inward operator would obtain the number from the local information operator, and ring the call. Once the called party answered, the originating operator would advise him or her to stand by for the calling party, whom she'd then ring back, and record the starting time, once the conversation began.
While many have written-off the old-fashioned service and personal attention you'd once expect from the phone company and other service providers in favor of voice -automation and voice mail loops ,at FSO we opt for the way it use to be. That's why we answer your calls personallywith active involvement of the most tenured outsourcing leadership team in the business: Myself (Founder, Chief Happiness Officer, & Owner) and Jim Caton (President, Chief Chaos, & Owner) are “hands on” leaders who are intimate with every operation and who remain so for the life of the contract.
Thanks to WikiPedia, The American Association for Justice for helping us prepare this story, and to you for supporting FSO. Matthew Malamud is an associate editor of Trial. He can be reached at matthew.malamud@justice.org.
If know of someone who would enjoy working for or with FSO please do not keep us a secret.
Have a GREAT day
Notes:
AARP, Leading a Multigenerational Workforce (2007), assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/cs/misc/leading_a_multigenerational_workforce.pdf.
Id.
Sara J. Czaja et al., Factors Predicting the Use of Technology: Findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement, 21 Psychol. and Aging, 333 (2006).
LexisNexis, LexisNexis Technology Gap Survey (2008), www.lexisnexis.com/media/pdfs/LexisNexis-Technology-Gap-Survey-4-09.pdf.
Id.
Pew Research Center, Generations and Their Gadgets (Feb. 3, 2011), www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx. The authors separated younger Baby Boomers, age 47–56, from older Baby Boomers, age 57–65; the 46 percent of Baby Boomers who own a laptop is an average of the two segments’ proportions.
Pew Research Center, 65% of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites (Aug. 26, 2011), http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx.
Id.
