Law Schools

iGen And The Law

The new generation is in law school, and if we put our heads in the sand and pretend these changes aren’t happening, the gap between us and our students will only grow larger and harder to bridge.

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‘Yesssss! We got in!’

Did you know that people born after 1995 are no longer considered millennials? It isn’t something I had given much thought to until recently, when I had an absolutely horrifying moment while teaching: I made a pop-culture reference that none of my students understood. I walked back to my office licking my wounds thinking “wasn’t it just yesterday I was 25 and a cool, hip, young law professor?” Well, probably not if I was using the word hip. But, I digress. This experience, while psychologically unpleasant, was a real eye-opener for me. I realized that for a while now, I have been wrongfully assuming that the majority of my students are millennials. When I first started teaching, this was true and it was great for me. I’m a millennial, they were millennials, and in many ways, I related to my students more than my colleagues.

But time did what time does; it kept moving on. And now, I find myself in the wholly unoriginal position of being a teacher who feels like she can’t relate to her students. And so, as any good millennial would, I promptly took to the internet to solve my problems. It was there I stumbled upon iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood by Jean M. Twenge. Reading iGen has been incredibly helpful in gaining insight into my students, and I highly recommend anyone who teaches, mentors, supervises, or otherwise interacts with iGen’ers to pick up this book.

If you regularly read my column, first, thank you! Second, you may have noticed that most of my articles are designed as mini lesson plans (occupational hazard). This one won’t be like that. This one will likely leave us with more questions than answers. I am actually hoping that it sparks a larger discussion on this topic, and I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find me on LinkedIn or at the email in my byline if you want to be a part of the conversation.

So, without further ado, let’s explore how we may be able to better connect with iGen’ers, better educate them, and brainstorm ways in which they may shape the legal profession.

According to iGen, people born after 1995 are considered iGen’ers. This generation does not have an official cut off yet, but the author guesses that it may be between 2009 and 2015. That means as of the publication of this article, the oldest iGen’ers are 24 years old and some of them are attending law school!

In iGen, Twenge clearly and concisely describes the following 10 defining features of iGen’ers:

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  1. An extended childhood
  2. The impact of the internet (and what iGen’ers aren’t doing as a result of how much time they spend on the internet)
  3. The decline of in-person social interactions
  4. A rise in mental health issues
  5. A decline in following organized religion
  6. Heightened interest in safety (physical, mental, and emotional)
  7. Income insecurity
  8. Postponing certain milestones, such as drinking alcohol, having sex, getting married, and having children
  9. Striving to include others
  10. Independent political views

While all of these factors can, and likely will, play a role in shaping the legal profession going forward, for the sake of my 1,200ish word-count limit, I’ll focus my discussion on the extended childhood, mental health, and safety factors. As a professor, I see these factors as posing the biggest challenges in legal education. Besides, as a card-carrying millennial, I can’t in good faith participate in a “the internet is ruining everything” discussion. Furthermore, us lawyers tend to or at least try to, keep God out of the law.

Extended childhood

According to Twenge, “Contrary to the prevalent idea that children are growing up faster than previous generations did, iGen’ers are growing up more slowly: 18-year-olds now act like 15-year-olds used to, and 13-year-olds like 10-year-olds.”  If we can extend this analogy to law students, that means that 22-year-olds now act like 19-year-olds. This raises some serious questions for me. I teach in both undergraduate and law school settings, and I certainly interact with college sophomores and juniors, different than I do with first-year law students. To start, I have different expectations about their world views, life experiences, and maturity levels.

As with most of what I’ve learned on this topic to date, I’m not entirely sure what to do with this piece of information. Do I start treating 1Ls the same way I used to treat sophomores? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what this means in terms of the adjustments I may need to make in teaching college courses. But, I think legal educators need to seriously consider this important mindset shift in their students. The next step is to find a way to adequately prepare our students for the very serious responsibility of joining the legal profession, while also meeting our students where they are.

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Mental health

One of the most upsetting parts of iGen for me was the chapter titled “insecure: the mental health crisis” where I learned that anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are drastically higher among iGen’ers. This means the youngest, and already most vulnerable members of our society, are becoming even more vulnerable. When you put this piece of information in the context of the legal profession, it becomes even more upsetting. We all know anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse are significantly higher in the legal profession than among the general public. To date, studies have shown that individuals who go to law school are not actually predisposed to suffering from anxiety, depression or alcoholism, rather these are an unpleasant side effect of our chosen profession. The combination of these two statistics is downright terrifying, and it makes me wonder if law schools and bar associations need to become even more proactive and vigilant in their mental health efforts.

Safety

Apparently the oh-so-charming term “snowflake” is not just reserved for liberals and millennials, but has also been used to describe iGen’ers as well. Twenge discusses that iGen’ers place an extremely high premium on safety. And not just physical safety, but also, and perhaps more importantly, mental and emotional safety.  One of the studies quoted in iGen found that a majority of iGen’ers believed that safe spaces should be provided for students who would be upset by a campus speaker and that it is the school’s job to provide such a space.

I don’t know enough about the concept of safe spaces to form an opinion on them, but this concept raises the following questions for me:

  • What does this mean in the context of a constitutional law class that raises sensitive issues related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and abortion?
  • How do we teach students and stretch their minds without alienating them? Discomfort is often where growth happens.
  • Isn’t a little outrage a good thing? It is often what sparks change and inspires action.

I realize this article may have taken on an unintentionally negative tone. There are some awesome characteristics about iGen’ers as well, not the least of which are they are tech-savvy, can easily access information, are as a group acting less recklessly, and take financial issues more seriously. And, based on my small sample size of about fifty iGen students this spring, they are taking a much more active and engaged interest in their legal education.

Like I said before, I have more questions than answers when it comes to all of this. But, one thing I do know is that if we put our heads in the sand and pretend these changes aren’t happening, the gap between us and our students will only grow larger and harder to bridge. I know that I will continue researching, writing, and talking about this. What will you do?

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

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