Different Chapters, Same Story :: Reflections on Working Across Generations

By Rebecca Marquez I am the youngest person on our team.

I noticed it early on. Not in an uncomfortable way, but in the quiet way you notice something interesting about the room you've walked into. Eight of us, spread across decades of experience, each carrying a different relationship with the legal world, with work itself, with what a "normal" Tuesday looks like in a professional setting.

It could have felt like a gap, at times it has. But mostly it has felt like an opportunity I didn't entirely expect.

I'm writing this not as someone with all the answers but as someone sitting in a unique vantage point, watching what happens when different generations actually try to work well together. And while I’m at it, I’m thinking about what that might mean for the law firms and legal teams we have the privilege of working with.

The Room We're All Sitting In

If you work in a law firm, you already know that the workforce spans more generations than it ever has before; Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, sometimes all in the same meeting. Each of those groups came of age in a different world, shaped by different technology, different economic realities, and very different ideas about what a career is supposed to look like.

That diversity is genuinely rich. A senior partner who has navigated three recessions and built client relationships over twenty years carries something that can't be Googled. And a junior associate who grew up swimming in information, comfortable with digital tools, and unafraid to question the way things have always been done, they bring something equally real, just differently shaped.

What I've noticed, though, is that richness doesn't become collaboration on its own. It needs a little tending.

A Few Things That Seem to Help

I'm not a manager and I'm not setting policy for anyone, but from where I sit, as the youngest person, and as someone paying attention, a few things seem to make a real difference in multigenerational teams.

Curiosity tends to go further than assumption. When something feels off across a generational line, the most useful question is usually a genuine one: What do you need from me on this? or, How do you prefer to work through something like this?

Both directions of mentorship are valuable. There's something quietly powerful about a team where experience flows both ways. Where a seasoned lawyer shares what twenty years of client relationships have taught them, and a junior colleague shows them something new about a tool or a process. Neither has to be the expert in everything.

Shared language helps. One of the quieter gifts of doing something like a DiSC session is that it gives a team a common vocabulary. Instead of "you're being difficult," you can say "I think we might be approaching this from different styles." That small shift in language makes a big difference in how safe people feel raising topics, and in a profession where admitting uncertainty has traditionally carried risk, that safety matters more than people might expect.

Why This Matters for Legal Teams Specifically

Law firms carry a particular weight when it comes to intergenerational dynamics. The profession is hierarchical by design, and many of the norms that govern it were built by and for a specific kind of career trajectory, a trajectory that younger lawyers are increasingly renegotiating.

What seems to be emerging is that the practices helping teams thrive aren't complicated. They're mostly about making room for different communication styles, for feedback that flows in multiple directions, for junior voices to be genuinely included, and for senior wisdom to be genuinely honoured.

The firms doing this well aren't doing it perfectly. They're just doing it intentionally.

What I've Learned From the Other Chapters

Being the youngest person on our team has taught me something I didn't expect. The value of experience isn't just in having it. It's in being willing to share it. And the value of a fresh perspective isn't in challenging everything that's come before. It's in helping people see familiar things in new ways.

Different chapters. Same story.

At our best, we're all helping write it together.

An Invitation, If Any of This Resonates

If you're curious about the DiSC work I mentioned, or just want to talk through what's showing up on your team, we're always happy to have that conversation.