Something new?

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.

The rearview mirror

Why am I not surprised that lawyers prefer to stick to what they have done before? A lot of people do: it's a known quantity, it requires less time, and it costs less. Lawyers are comfortable with precedent, and that is what it is all about.

And at one level that's OK. Why reinvent the wheel?

But there is a caveat.

For all their talk of innovation (one of the most used words on law firm websites) lawyers aren't very good at "the new". For a number it simply means finding a slightly different way to bill you. And as for marketing? Lawyers shrink at the thought of anything too novel. At one of the firms I worked for, a partner told me, "The last thing we want to be is first", adding, "and anyway, why do we need to change anything? What we had was fine by me."

I left Ashfords LLP as Director of Marketing late yesterday afternoon. My P45 was in the post - the last time I had one of these was nearly 30 years ago. Today I go out on my own as George Wilkinson Consultancy.

And on what is for now, although I hope not for long, a rather clear desk, I have this quote,

We  should spend more time thinking about the future and postulating possible outcomes, rather than relying on the past.

History is important for all sorts of reasons but, as my team became very tired of hearing, the future is not going to be more of the same. That will be as true of law as it is for all the professions, and how law is sold and marketed is going to change.

All I know is that this is going to be an exciting time. 

Note: the quote is by Karl Sternberg from his review in Christ Church Matters of Jerome Booth's Emerging Markets in an Upside Down World.