Legal Innovation isn’t hype. It’s just a mindset you haven’t learned yet.
This week I spoke with a senior in-house lawyer who said words to the effect of:
‘Most legal innovation is bulls**t. It’s just hype that doesn’t make a tangible impact on the way lawyers work.’
It sounds like a shocking thing to say, but at the time it made sense. In fact, I actually understood where this lawyer was coming from. Let me explain:
Where’s the AI?
There are plenty of articles and LinkedIn posts floating around with vague references to AI and the future of law. Most fail to pinpoint any material evolutions in legal practice.
The legal technology startup market has swollen to over $1.7 billion of capital investment in the last few years, and yet I still don’t see any robots reading contracts. It’s too easy for vendors and evangelists to fall into the trap of saying that their latest update is the greatest ever — a promise that is doomed to underwhelm.
Where’s the innovation?
There are also huge segments of the legal industry that have hardly evolved over the last decade. Many in-house teams barely utilise technology, process design or agile talent methodologies.
Instead, they continue to trot along at the same pace, seemingly without consequence. As Richard Susskind famously says, “It’s hard to convince a room full of millionaires that their business model is broken.”
But just because innovation doesn’t look like AI, and because it’s not all pervasive yet, doesn’t mean it’s all fluff, hype or pompousness. In fact, legal innovation is everywhere — and it’s happening right now.
Looking in the wrong places
The thing is, innovation isn’t a destination.
If you’re looking for robots, software, or completely redesigned law firms, you will always be disappointed. Like this senior lawyer, you might become disenfranchised and fall into the trap of believing that the way things are done now is the way they’ll always be done.
And unfortunately, the future doesn’t care what you think. The legal function might be the last to evolve, but it isn’t immune from the transformation we’ve seen overhaul other business units.
Legal innovation is a mindset.
Legal innovation is really about adopting a mindset of continuous improvement. It’s about doing things differently (for good reason).
Legal innovation is also about responding to relevant trends that are reshaping legal service delivery. These trends include the drive toward consumer-centricity, the adoption of legal technology, the re-focus in outputs over inputs.
Forward-thinkers who have approached legal functions with an innovation mindset have made tangible impacts on the way legal work is done. For example:
- Legal technology has already digitised many manual processes within legal functions. From intake and triage, to contract management and mattermanagemetn, legal technology has made leaps and bounds in the last decade. There is a long way to go on the technology front, but there are legal functions who have digitised their entire workflows, document storage processes and intake systems, creating huge efficiencies.
- Legal work is increasingly disaggregated. Instead of sending all of their work to one law firm, clients are breaking up legal matters and parcelling out to cost-optimised providers. While your top-tier firm might provide corporate advisory services, it is much cheaper and cost-effective to outsource the Due Diligence phase to a cheap Alternative Legal Service Provider or an off-shore Legal Process Outsourcing firm. Innovators have dislodged the tight grip of traditional law firms outsourced legal function work, and corporate clients have benefitted hugely.
- Legal functions are moving towards acceptable levels of cultural diversity and gender diversity. Women and ethnic minorities have mostly been excluded from senior legal positions for almost the entire history of the legal profession. But we are now seeing the rise of the female General Counsel and an increasing acknowledgement of the inexcusable lack of cultural diversity within legal functions. Thanks to innovators such as Connie Brenton, Steph Corey, Mary Carrol, Anna Lozynski (and so many more), in-house legal functions are setting the standard for diversity and placing more and more pressure on law firms to follow suit.
These are just some examples of the real, tangible impacts that innovation has had on legal functions in the last 10 years. And we’re just getting started.
What I should’ve said
I wasn’t particularly articulate in my response at the time this senior lawyer challenged the legal innovation mindset.
But with 20/20 hindsight I think I’d say (kindly):
“Innovation is a mindset, not an outcome or a destination. It is happening all the time and it’s making a tangible impact on the way legal services are delivered. At it’s heart, legal innovation is about doing things better.
Top performers in every field keep one eye on improving the way they work. Lawyers haven’t been so good at that in the past, but they will need to be in the future. Legal work is not immune from the forces of consumer-centricity and digital transformation, which have shaped every profession.”
All you need to do is ask, with care and openness “how can I make this better?” That question alone makes you an innovator.
