Culture in Focus: Adapting Our Firm for Tomorrow’s Leaders

What distinguishes a Big Law firm from its competitors?

In bygone eras, the answer was straightforward: Firms that stopped at nothing to achieve the results they desired were more likely than others to achieve them. At the most competitive firms, work was all-consuming. Lawyers burnt bright and then out, often at the expense of their health and relationships.

These days, the answer is more complex. Yes, results remain deeply important, as they should. But yesteryear’s tunnel vision is no longer the recipe for sustaining them. Whether to win business, attract talent, or deliver value for clients, competition today is multifaceted, and culture sits at the center of it.

This shift is largely a generational phenomenon.

When Millennials began arriving in Big Law in the mid-2000s, they brought a new perspective on work — one prioritizing growth, balance, and purpose. Today, they make up a large and growing share of partnerships.

Gen Z, soon to comprise nearly all associates, has expanded this perspective — adding collaboration, flexibility, and inclusion to the mix. These young lawyers are tomorrow’s first chairs and dealmakers — indeed, tomorrow’s clients — and their impact on firms will only grow in the years ahead.

The upshot is this: To compete at the highest level, firms would be wise to weave the goals, needs, and values of young lawyers into their everyday activities — both internal and external. At Vinson & Elkins, we’re doing exactly that, adapting the culture inside our firm to power our success outside it.

The Value of Wellbeing

There are many ways to adapt a culture. But our firm focuses on three.

The first is to embed wellbeing . Anyone who has jumped from student life to firm life knows that settling in can take time. Complex work, tight deadlines, and unfamiliar routines — alongside everyday stressors in our personal lives and the world at large — can overwhelm young lawyers, and dedicated support is essential to carving out a sustainable path .

We see wellbeing — mental, physical, and emotional — as the foundation of that support, and we provide it through mentorship, coaching, affinity groups, external care resources, and more. Research shows that in highly competitive industries, people who feel happy and healthy deliver work and service that’s superior to those who don’t. Our experience bears that out.

Bonds Based on Trust

A second focus is to encourage bond-building across the firm’s many diverse groups — across interests and experiences; generations and ethnic backgrounds; roles, offices, practice groups, and more. Building bonds enhances wellbeing, and it’s a two-way street, entailing participation from both new faces and seasoned practitioners.

We work closely with people at all levels of the firm, arranging opportunities for them to get to know one another on both a professional and personal level, especially those who might not get a chance to connect through day-to-day business.

Firm leaders and partners shaped their careers through bond-building, turning their expertise, authenticity, and reliability into trustful relationships, and those relationships into lasting business. The same skillset applies in-house, and we urge the partnership to use it when advising and mentoring young lawyers.

The idea here is to help plant seeds — like knowledge, skills, or relationships — that people can harvest down the road. Maybe the harvest is weeks later on the next deal; maybe it’s years away on a pitch. This is no small investment, but the returns are always worthwhile.

An Entrepreneurial Environment

Then there is entrepreneurship. Our young lawyers regularly tell us about the importance they place on professional growth — not just in strengthening their legal acumen, but in sharpening their business development skills. We love this. In our experience, the earlier that lawyers begin learning business development, the more likely they are to enjoy a productive, fulfilling career .

That’s why we aim to cultivate an entrepreneurial environment, empowering young lawyers to explore their interests, experiment with diverse colleagues, and seek out matters they find exciting. Encouraging lawyers to market themselves inside the firm prepares them to do the same with clients and prospects.

Innovation is an underappreciated piece of this. The lawyers who devise creative, thoughtful ways to express their interests and demonstrate their qualities are often those who find themselves on the matters they find most meaningful.

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I should emphasize that none of this is the result of any one person, nor something that succeeded overnight. Instead, it is the product of a long-term, collaborative process, with our remarkable attorney development team leading the way.

Every practice group includes professional coaches who ensure that associates have opportunities to develop — that voices are heard, connections are forming, and work is fulfilling — and that partners play an active role. When adapting a culture, there is no finish line, and everyone contributes.