1. He is, sometimes, mainly.

2. Listen up. I hate the slackoisie’ phenomenon. But it needs to talked about non-stop. It’s a huge and expensive ($) problem that hurts good clients. And a war for quality. Really is. There are solutions but those solutions can’t hurt employers.

Right now too many (all ages) are in denial about it. Logic and studies and calm discourse have failed. Humor and hyperbole is often all you’ve got to get it too sink in.

We have an utterly failed generation in our workplaces. There are lots of them. It does not matter who made them so helpless. We just have to fix it. First, education. Any way we can do it.

It’s about customers, clients and a profession–not vitriol and fun.

Dan

By the way, I’ll second Dan on SHG. I don’t know about his house or what he eats, but he’s probably one of the nicest guys around.

The guy decrying those damned kids these days as narcissists is responding to blog comments at 1:22am because somebody anonymous on the Internet didn’t sufficiently respect his Steak Eating Man status. Really? Hey Danny, do you have a Google Alert out for your own name or something? Because if you do, that sounds a bit narcissistic, and if you don’t, you’re wasting a lot of time scanning blog comments when you should be working, or sleeping so you can work harder, you silly windbag. On what did you base your condescending assumptions about that commenter’s life, by the way? The simple fact that he doesn’t agree with your tedious pet cause? That’s weak. Attorneys should have better reasoning skills than that.

This slagging on the younger generation in the legal industry sounds like the same kind of pointless and hypocritical griping that our generation does everywhere else. All the Serious Adults whining that college grads these days are so lazy because so many of them live at home are willfully ignoring the fact that our generation ran up housing prices to astronomical levels and destroyed the economy, leaving a lot of those kids few other options. Same with when I was a young associate in BigLaw – we didn’t have to bill as many hours as we’re asking of these kids, and I wouldn’t be shocked if you didn’t either, Hull. Then our entire profession got greedy, and we raced each other up to these stupidly high totals we’re billing today.

Todays young attorneys are no good hippies the same way we were when we were their age. Which is to say, they’re doing what young folks have always done at their age, and you’re doing what old folks have always done at our age, which is bitch about it out of some creeping realization that we’re growing older every day and soon enough they’ll be nipping at our heels. So from your position of authority, you tell everyone you can how worthless these kids are so you can enjoy a sense of moral superiority. It’s as classic a mid-life crisis move as buying a Corvette or Porsche and driving it around with the matching logo baseball cap. And neither act is as flattering as the actors seem to think.

The kids these days have grown up with faster-paced education and more heavily packed schedules than we ever had. They’ve grown up navigating a world overloaded with information and they know how to use time-saving technologies better than we do, for the most part. The sky isn’t falling and while your inner old fogey may take some sense of satisfaction from railing constantly about how it is, in the end that’s just a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Give your blood pressure a break and relax. It’ll keep you alive, eating steak and posting about how great you are on the Internet longer.

(P.s. – pointing out that narcissists use their real names, while posting with your real name, to accuse someone else, posting under a pseudonym, of being a narcissist? Classic! How do you come up with this stuff?)

You one of my firm’s 50+ very expensive anecdotes between 2006 and 2010? I sense you are.

Questions: How’s that job hunt goin’ in Flint? Learn to proofread yet? Still shake when you work past 5? You ever lose that sashay? And, whoa, “echo chambers of each other”? Ah, you got me, pard. Just died and went to Hallmark. Are you 26? Maybe a Texas A&M grad, too? 5′6″? 280 pounds?

Scott Greenfield? He has worked his ass off. He’s rich. Courtroom magic man and very fine writer. Powerful. Connected. He even has a nice voice. People want to interview him. Men like him. And women love him (well, there, I have no idea why). He’s a stand-up guy. Likes difficult challenges.

How about you? Scott eats big steaks–and with the right wines–every night with his gorgeous family on his palatial estate. And you? Macaroni and cheese with your cat, Big Al, maybe? Aren’t you tried of hiding and failing? Don’t you feel like ending it all some days? Bet you do. But try work.

Note, too: Real narcissists have real names.

Thanks, again, for all your courage over the years. And willingness to take big risks and do hard things.

Who’s the bigger narcissist, the one who is self-aware enough to recognize a problem and work toward a solution, or the one who latches on to a weak premise based on nothing more than mere anecdotes and obsesses about it daily? There’s a reason why Hull and Greenfield are echo chambers of each other and attract nobody else.

The phrase belongs to Scott Greenfield.