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Jason Barnwell is an attorney in Microsoft’s Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs department. He leads Microsoft’s Modern Legal team, with previous roles leading  Legal Business, Operations, and Strategy team, leading the Open Source Software practice group, and counseling the Cloud and AI Platform Business. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was an associate in the Emerging Companies practice group at Cooley LLP. Before entering law school, he worked as a software engineer developing enterprise software. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his J.D. from the University of Southern California School of Law.


How can we keep up with exponential increases in demand and complexity?  Invert the pyramid.


Bill Henderson once advised me not to use the term “industrialization” to describe changes in the legal profession to attorneys. It offends us, and we disengage. But I titled this field note “industrial evolution” because we must embrace industrialization as a necessary and valuable part of our transformation that will elevate the value of our profession in a digital age. Cf. Post 231 (Henderson breaking his own advice for the same reason, comparing legal to the early days of the auto industry).

This post is part of a series that reflects my legal industry learning journey, building upon my career journey (080), professional evolution (143), focus on knowledge work (159), and future practice design theory (210). This installment examines the changes happening now that require us to evolve to serve a civilization experiencing exponential change powered by the fourth industrial revolution, and how we might get there faster, together. See Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (2016) (cognitive automation will produce creative destruction).
Continue Reading Legal evolution is industrial evolution (277)

Legal professional skepticism of the future value of change investment leads to underinvestment.


A first-pass look at our future.


In earlier Legal Evolution posts, I’ve shared reflections upon my career journey (080), professional evolution (143), and current area of focus (159).  This article describes an investment hypothesis for the upcoming decade focused on building the future of the practice of law [hereafter,