Legal Innovation

Subscribe to Legal Innovation

You can’t sell what you don’t understand.

To be successful over the long run, law firm partners have to master the ABCs—i.e. acquire, bill, and collect fees that are commensurate with other partners in the firm. This requires enormous talent, energy, and skill.  Yet, in recent years, the job has become harder because of the growing number of in-house lawyers who are turning to outside counsel to help them cope with growing internal pressures to do more with less.

The lack of foundational training in innovation and related disciplines makes this challenging for both lawyers. However, it’s truly harrowing for the law firm partner because they’re the service provider in the lawyer-client relationship. Thus, there’s zero doubt who’s expected to lead.

How, exactly, does a partner navigate this transition period?…
Continue Reading Selling innovation to clients (178)

Scenes from my pre-law life and careers

Doing my best to make sense of the experience.

In October 2019, I was in the first session of his Innovation Diffusion in the Legal Industry class at Northwestern Law.  I was puzzled because I couldn’t figure why Professor Henderson, who was 16 years…

The story of how one legal department is using legal operations to engage stakeholders and reduce risk.

In 2019, I graduated from Northwestern’s Master of Science in Law.  After graduation, I got a job in the legal department at VillageMD, a healthcare and technology growth company. I am actually one of three graduates…

Will 2020 unleash a long-awaited wave of legal innovation?

Law firms offer a bundle of services tied tightly together, and most lawyers think of this bundle as a naturally integrated offering.  But innovators have long believed that the legal services bundle is actually composed of a series of largely unrelated capabilities, and the true flowering…

Innovation during a pandemic—an exercise in collaboration.

Per Bill’s introduction in Post 169, I’ve been invited to share Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s plans for the fall.

The most noteworthy feature, summarized in the above graphic, is a new block scheduling format for 1Ls, which reflects a mix of in-person and online modalities…

Details on Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials

Every summer since 2018, Bucerius Law School has offered a three-week, on-campus Summer Program on legal technology and operations. In total, the program has now educated nearly 70 highly selected students. The faculty has included some regular contributors to this publication and will hopefully also include others …

Congrats to the KO law firm, an IFLP employer, for winning 2020 CLOC Legal Innovations in Operations Award.

When you’re a small growth company focused on product development, sales, and customer service, you don’t have a lot of time or interest in talking to expensive lawyers. That said, you likely do have a strong interest…