One of the key themes of the final report from the CBA Futures Initiative is innovation: doing law differently, changing the regulatory regimes to allow for greater flexibility in law firm ownership structures, learning to partner with other legal and non-legal professionals to deliver a more holistic approach to serving clients.
The report (.pdf), released at the CBA Legal Conference in St. John’s, is replete with forceful words and strong recommendations. But how do law firm leaders turn those words and recommendations into action items? How to lead innovation?
A lot has been written on the topic over the years, and it all boils down to a few key themes:
- It starts with the client: “The most important thing,” as former JDS Uniphase CFO Zita Cobb told the closing luncheon at the St. John’s conference, “is to keep the most important thing the most important thing.” In legal innovation, the most important thing is the client. The question to ask is “What does my client want/need?” and then deliver the service that answers that question.
- It starts with you: There has to be a firm commitment to innovation at the top – the ideas can come from anywhere in the organization, but the top has to be ready and willing to implement them.
- Avert your risk aversion: Not everything will work perfectly the first time. That has to be OK.
- Find your niche: What is it you can do better, more efficiently and for a more competitive price than anyone else?
- Be willing to invest in innovation.
Not all innovation is progress, however. It has to make its own sense.
“I am not one to champion disruption unless there is a clear business case, and innovation without impact is truly a waste of time,” Alex Hobbs writes in the online article, Law Firm Innovation: Success Factors & Killers. “Nevertheless innovation does offer a massive opportunity/threat in our precedent-bound profession.”
Hobbs offers up some tips for law firm leaders:
- Get the buy-in: “Everything you do must be focused on driving the success of the firm’s core business activities,” but “don’t sell too hard. Lawyers don’t like it.” It’s all about making the right pitch at the right time, stressing that everyone’s working to the same end: “greater fees generated in less time.”
- Nullify change resistance: “You must … align all change to business goals and get buy-in from stakeholders at all levels and across departments by contextualizing for them that the change is not for the sake of change, and will positively impact their day-to-day life.”
- Ask the important questions:
- Do clients want innovation, or do they want cheaper services?
- What does being innovative actually mean in terms of firm service offerings
- How can lawyers and partners themselves play a part in supporting their firm’s innovation? And why would they want to?
- Find out what’s working for other people: “Piggy-backing on best practice will not drive competitive edge or indeed ensure survival, but it is a low-risk starting point.”
In a presentation to the ReInvent Law conference in New York last February, Susan Hackett, founder of Legal Executive Leadership in Maryland, offered a number of keys to promoting behavioural change, including:
- Don’t sell innovation. Sell success.
- Don’t promote “better-faster-cheaper. Clients don’t want cheap, they want value. They don’t want to push work down, they want to lift results up.
- Demonstrate trustworthiness, integrity, predictability.
- Provide the metrics and measurements that will demonstrate the value of legal work to corporate executive management.