Where would you want to work?

Over the last few months, I've gotten the impression from reading legal weblogs that quite a few older lawyers who struggle to understand what motivates the newest generation of lawyers. I don't know if it's true. I see the phrase "work/life balance" bandied about a lot (though no one quite seems to agree on what it means), and I've sometimes seen that phrase used disparagingly, as if to say, "If you want to have priorities elsewhere, I wouldn't want you to work for me." I don't generally meet this character in my daily life, but lots of people are telling me he exists (it's almost always a 'he') even if the stereotype that circulates is a bit of a caricature.

Bruce MacEwen has been posting about this issue periodically, most recently with a post titled "Can We See the Log in Our Own Eye?"

I'll make no pretense of being able to speak generally about what my generation wants. Over-generalization is seldom useful, and I'd guess that most of us don't know at this point what we 'really' want (will we ever?). But I can say that there are many in my generation who insist upon trying to be not only good lawyers, but also good, well rounded human beings. They find great value in the former enterprise but find that value dramatically diminishes when it detracts from the latter enterprise. This does not mean that attorneys who think this way view their professional work as trivial. In fact, as David Maister points out (picked up by Michelle Golden), they yearn for meaningful and challenging work, and they recognize the importance of that work. What's more, they can do it well; after all, their value systems don't make them inherently less capable. Like anyone else, they want financial security, too. They're just not willing — perhaps not able — to make that work the only source of value in their lives. Even financial security yields diminishing returns when traded off against other human needs.

Bruce concludes:

I believe firms may increasingly find themselves in two camps.

• One set of firms will cling to the "safety" of tradition, keeping associates in the dark, as the second-class citizens they are presumed to be, pointedly oblivious to "work/life" issues, letting the fungible young things sink or swim in the deep end of the pool they're being paid well to inhabit.
• Another set of firms will embark on the adventure of embracing this generation of graduates as true professional peers and colleagues, every bit as ravenous for challenge, stretching, and unfamiliar new assignments as we were— and will also embrace the reality that the highest form of human happiness comes not with work alone, but with work and with love.

The good news is that those of us blessed in work and in love are often the most productive and creative as well. This is nothing more than centuries-old wisdom, but some of us lost sight of it at the end of the 20th Century.

Where would you choose to work?