You say “potato”, I say “potato”: The question for the profession is not who is right, but whether we are willing to update how we grow people in organisational systems that now span four generations, writes Lara Wentworth and Andrea Foot.
Following the release of our 2025 white paper, Generational Dynamics Influencing the Legal Profession, we took the findings on the road to explore them more deeply. We met with lawyers at all stages of their careers and across firms of different sizes. During these discussions, senior lawyers frequently spoke with discomfort or annoyance about what they experienced as a lack of respect from younger colleagues. This was not casual frustration or rhetorical complaint. It was deeply felt.
One discussion tipped into prickly unease when a senior lawyer described younger lawyers as arrogant, prompting one younger participant to comment that “it feels like we’re totally roasting the Gen Zs in this conversation.” The moment was telling. It brought to the surface the friction between generations and how hard it is to feel understood on all sides. People weren’t being wilfully difficult; they were talking past one another, shaped by different career journeys and underlying assumptions about how learning and respect are expressed.
This moment encapsulated the white paper’s findings: when generational differences aren’t talked about, they tend to surface instead as tension, frustration, and disengagement. Across both the research and the in-person discussions, there was a genuine openness to exploring generational differences. Yet frustration around feedback surfaced repeatedly, from senior lawyers grappling with the expectations of younger lawyers they are trying to develop and from the younger lawyers in their expectations of their elders. Feedback was spoken about as though it were a single, concrete activity, universally understood. In reality, it carries very different meanings across generations, and it is these unexamined differences that sit at the heart of much intergenerational tension.
Feedback as the meeting point of authority, learning and respect
The white paper makes clear that generational dynamics in law firms are not simply about age. They reflect deeper differences in assumptions about authority, learning, risk and belonging. Feedback has become the flashpoint because it sits at the intersection of all four.
For many senior lawyers, feedback was historically infrequent, implicit, and often corrective. Silence meant you were doing fine. Learning happened through observation, repetition, and time. For younger lawyers, silence feels risky. Without feedback, they do not know whether they are meeting expectations, progressing appropriately, or misreading priorities. Seeking feedback is experienced as a way of managing uncertainty, not as a challenge to authority.
When these different experiences collide, misunderstanding follows. Senior lawyers interpret frequent feedback requests as entitlement or a lack of resilience. Junior lawyers interpret minimal or delayed feedback as disengagement or indifference. Both believe they are acting reasonably. Both feel misunderstood.
Respect, psychological safety and a false binary
One of the strongest themes in the white paper is the differing emphasis placed on psychological safety and wellbeing by younger lawyers, compared with older generations who were trained to normalise pressure. Feedback sits squarely at the centre of this divide.
Younger lawyers often use feedback to calibrate themselves in a demanding and ambiguous environment. Older lawyers may worry that too much feedback undermines independence or toughness. This difference is often framed as a debate about resilience. The research suggests it is more accurately understood as a difference in coping strategies.
Feedback is not a marker of fragility or strength. It is a mechanism for managing risk. The leadership skill lies in recognising what feedback is doing for different cohorts, rather than assuming shared meaning.
When feedback becomes tangled with pay and progression
The white paper also highlights how, in the absence of clear leadership and performance frameworks, feedback can become entangled with expectations around remuneration and promotion, a theme that surfaced strongly in our discussions with senior lawyers. Many firms have moved away from annual reviews in favour of more regular check-ins, responding to legitimate concerns about outdated performance systems. But without clarity, every feedback conversation can feel loaded.
Senior lawyers expressed frustration that feedback discussions increasingly turn into questions about pay or advancement. Junior lawyers expressed confusion about what feedback is for if it is not connected to progression. When systems are opaque, people fill the gaps with assumptions, anxiety, and resentment.
We learnt that some firms are responding by deliberately separating developmental feedback from remuneration decisions, clarifying promotion criteria, and being explicit about timelines. These are not complex interventions, but they require discipline. The white paper indicates that generational friction is more likely to ease when expectations are made explicit, rather than left to informal reassurance or assumption.
Feedback as a leadership capability issue
Perhaps the most confronting finding in the white paper is that only around 23 per cent of respondents believe leadership is effective at managing generational differences. Feedback is where this leadership gap becomes most visible.
Most leaders in law firms were trained for technical excellence, not for leading across differences. Yet feedback in a multi-generational workforce now requires emotional literacy, adaptability, and comfort with challenge. Avoiding feedback because it feels fraught, or relying on familiar but outdated models, tends to amplify rather than resolve tension.
The cost of getting this wrong is not theoretical. It shows up as disengagement, quiet attrition, and cultural fragmentation, particularly in mid-sized firms where leadership capacity is stretched and expectations are high.
Practical skills lawyers can develop, at every level
The white paper is clear that these challenges are not about personality or intent. They are about capability, and capability can be developed.
For partners and senior leaders:
For senior associates and managers:
For junior lawyers:
These are learnable practices, not fixed traits.
From ‘in my day’ to ‘in this system’
The generational dynamics emerging in law firms are not evidence of decline. They are signals of transition. Feedback has become the flashpoint because it touches identity, authority, and development all at once.
The question for the profession is not who is right, but whether we are willing to update how we grow people in organisational systems that now span four generations. When feedback is clarified, contextualised, and delivered with skill, it becomes a bridge rather than a battleground.
You may still say “potato”. Someone else may still hear “potato”. But leadership today lies in noticing the difference, and developing the skills to translate.
Lara Wentworth is a founder and director, and Andrea Foot is a program architect, at Coaching Advocates.
