I have a problem when innovation and lawyers are mentioned in the same sentence.
'Innovation' is one of those lazy words employed by lawyers (and their marketers) in the hope that it will make them look smart (another lazy word - forgive me, I spent a long time as a lawyer and then crossed to the dark side of marketing).
In a recent article in The Lawyer, Clifford Chance’s Visser warns firms: innovate or die, Clifford Chance's head of innovation was quoted “We will see part of the work go to disruptive firms if we don’t take any action. The next generation of lawyers is crucial to achieving innovation and change."
Hmmm.
So imagine my delight when reading Bruce MacEwen's latest article, Letter from London: Part II, in Adam Smith, Esq. In it, Bruce writes,
“Innovation,” however, represents something else entirely to most people who bring it up. It’s invoked as a separate and unique category of human inventiveness, and the implied yardstick is that if it’s not “disruptive” it’s not real innovation. Disruption, in turn, implies non-linear, discontinuous change, with near banishment of the old order: Cars vs. horses, iTunes vs. CDs, smartphones vs. BlackBerrys.
If disruption in this sense is the acid test for innovation, then we think Law Land is nowhere. We are still doing basically what we’ve always been doing, using people drawn from the same backgrounds, charging clients under the same revenue model, and governing and organizing our firms using the same managerial model.
Perceptive and true.
