Ever heard of ‘constant partial attention’? I was at a press bash for City firm Nabarro the other night when, in conversation about the Gazette’s work on Twitter and recent foray on to social media websites LinkedIn and Facebook page with Nabarro’s IT director, the phrase was mentioned.

When I worked out what it meant I realised that I, and lot of other people, may suffer from this dire-sounding ailment. Worse, I realised that the lawyers of the future could have a terminal case of it.

Andrew Powell, Nabarro’s chief techno wizard, said young people today seem to suffer from this CPA much more than people of ‘our’ generation (and neither of us are past 40), and he should know. It’s easy to say this is because of MySpace and Facebook and what have you, kids today etc, but to be honest I think I’ve got a shocking case of it so it can’t be their fault.

When the Gazette climbed on board the good ship Twitter and made a LinkedIn group, etc etc, I knew it would be a bit more work for perhaps no immediate benefit – such is life in publishing, and doing anything new takes time to have an effect. What I didn’t expect is how much attention these things take up. I spent an hour editing some work the other day that should have been a 15-minute job because I spent most of my time looking at email, LinkedIn, Facebook, the Gazette’s website and, occasionally, the proof in front of me.

We all know email is the great thief of time, but those people just about to enter the profession have grown up with social networking, instant messaging, and want everything now and don’t mind everyone knowing about it. Tempering these young guns’ urge to have everything now will not be easy to deal with for IT directors of the future – repressing their drive to share instantly doubly so.

How will law firms give their young staff the communications tools they’ve become completely attached to, without creating the leakiest law firm in the land? Way more important, how will partners make sure that they’re getting people who can concentrate on tasks for reasonable lengths of time?

I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I fear we’ve got to come up with them, fast.