“Legal operations” was popularized by CLOC, ACC, and a hundred vendors capitalizing on selling to newly energized corporate legal departments. It became shorthand for running legal departments as a business. Then a
Media attention shifts rapidly from law firm profitability to gender bias and from technology to new lateral partners. Yet, if we pull back to conduct a deeper analysis, what we observe is a law firm sector grappling with three interrelated threats that are seldom the focus of sustained attention: insufficient leadership, attorneys’ lack of meaning and purpose in their work, and client service. As shown in the above graphic, these three domains are the linchpins of law firm performance and sustainability.
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The legal industry is full of opinions – and so it is full of noise. In 2019, 🤦♂️ facepalming and 🙄 eyerolling at innovation hype is still very much in vogue, and so a lot of the noise is 😒 negative 😠 in tone.
Amidst all the noise, though, I see very clear signals of meaningful change.
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When you’re closing in on the end of your second decade doing something, as I am in the legal technology field, you’re going to experience many transformations. And I think it’s safe to say that, in the field of technology, the pace of change is not dissimilar to the springtime waters of the Copper River in Alaska when salmon swim into the rushing rapids — a lot of effort to travel a short distance to achieve a critically important goal.
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In this post, I tell an old Michael Lewis story that bears on the law. Remarkably, most of the insights come from a 15-year-old boy named Marcus Arnold, pictured above with Lewis circa 2001. I then review the U.K.’s journey to market liberalization, including the repeal of the British version of Model Rule 5.4.
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Innovation is taking place in many parts of the legal ecosystem these days. Yet, as relates to legal operations inside corporate legal departments, a refreshing community of practice is starting to unfold. The camaraderie and fellowship among practitioners,
For many of us, success is partially a function of being at the right place at the right time. Yet, this type of luck often has even larger second-order effects, such as the ability to see new and emerging business opportunities. Indeed, this is how I see the careers of Ian Nelson and Chris Wedgeworth, who were part of the sales team that helped Practical Law Company (PLC) enter and dominate the U.S. market.
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Several years ago, if someone asked me how to solve the U.S. access to justice problem, I would have replied, “more government funding, more generous philanthropy, and more pro bono hours from lawyers.” With these greater inputs, a lawyer would be available to every citizen needing to access the legal system. Almost as a reflex, I suspect a large number of my lawyer peers would have given the same answer.
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The graphic above is worksheet designed to aid the development and adoption of legal innovations. I created it for my “How Innovation Diffuses in the Legal Industry” courses at Bucerius and Northwestern Law (downloadable PDF available here). This past week, I had the opportunity to present it at LMA’s P3 Conference in Chicago.
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We are headlong into a period in which law schools, when considered as a whole, are working hard on innovation. This innovation pertains to the full gamut of law school operations and activities. This includes:
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