The latest workplace request from Gen Z: legal services

• More young workers say they want legal help as a workplace benefit, a survey from MetLife showed.
• The desire comes as more Gen Zers are stressed about their finances.
• About one-third of Gen Zers chose a legal benefit because they expected to use it within a year.

You're a Gen Zer early in your career: You want an interesting job, ample work-life balance, and, oh yeah, a lawyer.

The newest slice of the labor force has growing interest in legal help because they're worried about everything from rental agreements to traffic tickets, according to an employee-benefit study from MetLife.

Among Gen Z workers MetLife surveyed, 84% said they were keen on signing up for legal services offered by their employer, up from 76% a year earlier. And some four in 10 Gen Zers say legal bennies are a "must have."

Many workers — but particularly younger ones — want peace of mind, Ingrid Tolentino, CEO of MetLife Legal Plans, told Business Insider. "Legal issues are financial issues," she said. "The minute you're navigating the legal system and you have a legal matter, the first thing people think about is can I afford it."

Four in 10 Gen Zers choose a legal plan to try and save money, according to MetLife research.

Affordability is, no surprise, a big deal for the many Gen Zers who feel pinched financially. Nearly four in 10 work side hustles to pull in extra cash. And they're more likely to feel insecure about their finances than older groups, according to Monster.com. Financial headaches like student debt among 20-something workers are driving demand for employer benefits around personal finance, BI previously reported.

Of course, worries about hits to the wallet extend beyond Gen Z. Among workers of all ages, demand for access to legal services as a workplace benefit has more than doubled since before the pandemic, MetLife found.

But young workers, especially, have had ample reason to want a legal assist, Tolentino said. She noted demand for help went up as young workers, who are often renters, left cities during the pandemic and had to try and get out of leases. And canceled vacations and postponed weddings often meant trying to get out of contracts, she said.

Just over one-third of Gen Z workers who chose a legal benefit at work said it was because they expected to tap into it within a year, according to MetLife.

It's not just about getting out of traffic tickets. There is a growing number of Gen Zers caring for aging parents or grandparents, Tolentino said. Some 6% of adult caregivers are from Gen Z, according to a 2020 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. That figure is expected to grow.

Already, some legal offerings span reproductive needs to adoption to real estate planning. Tolentino expects the legal help employers offer will, in the coming years, continue to wrap in more services like offering advice related to a worker's side hustle.

"A lot of employees have an Etsy shop or some other shop," she said. They're making everything from candles to greeting cards to sweaters, and they want some protection there."

Typically the cost of a legal benefit works out to about $18 a month for a worker, Tolentino said. Surveyors for MetLife interviewed nearly 2,900 adult workers in the US in late 2022 and early 2023.