Why is it so hard to innovate in law?
My answer: lawyerish mindsets, that century old intellectual baggage that should have been discarded alongside the fax machine.
Lawyerish mindsets a big roadblock on the innovation highway. And as lawyers are in charge of law firms and lawyers teach lawyers to lawyer, each associate gets a badge, a laptop, and a cardboard box full of innovation-hostile mindsets on their first day.
How to get out of this spiral? Check our my five (5) lawyerish mindsets every lawyer needs to drop to actually innovate!
#1 ‘I have a good precedent for this’
This one is an aftermath of how lawyers are made. Law is a craft and as such is learned by doing. Watching your peers and endlessly replicating until you climb to the top (and possibly get a divorce).
When you are stuck while drafting a contract, you look for good wording in what has been done before (and/or is market standard, see #3). You write like your superiors like to write. Ugh. The problem with this approach in innovation context is that it pushes you in a box and any innovation attempt is only a mementum to something you saw before.
Quick fix: Next time head to the drawing board instead of the precedent bank.
#2 ‘This is market standard’
This one is tricky. I do not necessarily hate on market standard as a concept, more of what the lawyers made of it in certain cases. While it is important to find alignment with whatever the Client is used to (or more what you and the counterparty counsel are used to?) – this is not always what the Client actually needs or even wants.
Additionally, what is called market standard is every once in a while just a snowball of what one lawyer did on a super commercially negotiated obscure case that somehow made it outside of this when someone else was looking for inspiration, applying #1 above.
Quick fix: Ask your Client what they actually want and then design everything around their wish.
#3 It has to be a lawyer
Lawyers are smart folks – but I wouldn’t let a lawyer fix a hole in my shoe. In a similar fashion (and I am aware of what kind of heat this statement will bring upon me), I want to pick a COO, brand manager, software engineer, or graphic designer without checking their law school credentials first.
While I did meet many outliers in this regard, this trend of “they should run our law firm marketing/innovation/HR department because they practiced in BigLaw for fifteen (15) years so they must be good” is just silly and surprisingly common.
I am all in for career switches (and software developing attorneys), but does my hairdresser really need a JD?
Quick fix: Talk, work with, and especially listen to people wildly outside of your field with different outlooks.
#4 Finding nails to your hammers
Innovation is not tech. Tech is an enabler, and a vessel, but not always does innovative mindset require a gadget. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers get exposed to legal innovation primarily by getting some brand new toy.
Just like before buying you should have a clear idea of whether you want a car, a plane, or a kitchen blender, same applies to getting legal tech.
Quick fix: Write down what your painpoints are and only then choose any solutions (tech or not) and purchase after you are sure it fixes your problem and doesn’t cost you your kids’ education at a very little gain.
#5 ‘Here is the company template’
I swear this is not an attempt to make you the World’s Worst Worker. But especially if you work for a large organisation, sometimes it can get a little tricky to innovate.
It is great to produce a uniform input, but the guidelines should allow for flexibility and be revisited frequently, so that you are not stuck with a template from 2001 just because the template person left and no one took over.
Quick fix: Make sure that your organisation regularly revisits the templates – how about a template design and discussion session every six (6) months?
Final provisions
Practicing law is hard. Innovating in law is hard. Crushing all the negative lawyerish mindsets and biases? Very hard, but totally worth it. Keeping an open mind can make the process a whole lot easier.
Do you have any mindsets you fight when innovating?
Or some positive ones that everyone should foster?
Did you appreciate the wig joke?
Let me know down in the comments section!
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