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July 10, 2009
Jordan Furlong at Law21: Everything will change. Get used to it.
A slow-moving but relentless development that in time will have vast economic, social and political consequences.
--The Economist, June 26, 2009
No, you won't need to sell the condo in Marco Island. But yes, in the Americas or Europe, everything--especially if you are a corporate lawyer--is about to change. Inspired by a piece two weeks ago in The Economist on the demographics of aging in the West, Canada's Jordan Furlong at Law 21 just gave us "Time Bomb".
Law21--launched 18 months ago and subtitled "Dispatches From a Legal Profession on the Brink"--has already been right about many things. Furlong's article discusses the end of retirement. Unfunded pension rights. The waning of big incomes, and of many law schools. Sobering. And everyone will work longer in multi-generational places and modes of work? This blog? We would settle for just starting to work again--and without apology to fashionable consultants. We can get finally off our knees.
And finally one very bright spot. It's the passing reminder in Furlong's piece that Gen Y is done hatching--as if all those gooey little pods in the "Alien" movies were blown up and scattered into Deep Space. We will now meet "Gen Z". So pleased to meet y'all. Really mean that. But ah, Gen Y: The Millennials. We will perhaps miss that aggressive and cheerful Reverse-Moxie.
To their credit, since the early 1600s in the Americas, no generation--in the twenty that started out in Virginia and Massachusetts--has been able to do what they have done. Who else has had the gumption and foresight to grab Mediocrity and Work-Life Balance by the lapels, shove it all up against the wall, look it straight in the eye--and then call it "excellent" without laughing?
Jordan Furlong
Posted by JD Hull at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)