P2P

58 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 that were once provided by traditional firms. Think of the market shifts that have taken place with eDiscovery and that are now taking place with contract negotiation, administration, and enforcement. And those are just incipiencies. That's why firms are so pervasively adding the adjective "innovative" to firm marketing materials and rushing around trying to figure out exactly how to be innovative. They feel threatened Adding a Rudder. Notwithstanding the rise of innovation committees, innovation partners, and chief innovation officers inside those firms chasing the innovation imperative, most firms' innovation initiatives remain essentially rudderless. Firms are drifting around in the dark, uncertain as to both where they are and where they are going. This is where you come in. By strengthening the considerable skills you already have and adding still more skills, you can begin to bring your firms' innovation efforts onto course. Indeed, you can begin to set the course. I can already hear your protests. "That's not my job," you say, or "I don't have a seat at the table," or "No one will hear me if I try to begin guiding the firm." Nonsense. The refutation of your protests begins with an inventory of the skills you already possess. Whether your job description falls in IT, or KM, or any of the other disciplines that cluster on the technical side of the law firm business, you already understand something fundamental to innovation initiatives. You know how to deliver a project. You cut your teeth on project management, budgeting, spend management, and process improvement. Lawyers aren't trained to do any of those things, and it shows. Clients are now demanding increased project and process management precisely because lawyers are terrible at that. So, build those skills in order that when the firm decides to innovate in a particular arena, it will be able to deliver on those promises. Do that well, and a seat at the table will begin to grow right underneath your hinder parts. You're never given a seat. You always have to earn it…or grow it. Now, the question becomes where do we innovate…what exactly do we do? Here, again, you have an edge. If you've been studying the pages of this publication, you already understand terms like servant leadership and design thinking. And those are precisely the skills that your firm needs to begin to focus its innovation efforts. Lawyers are terrific at delivering answers. But they are…unpracticed…at probing deeply and empathetically into their clients' needs in the way that is contemplated by those two disciplines. And that is the biggest shortcoming faced by those firms struggling to set a course toward more innovation. They haven't learned how to listen. Indeed, for the most part, firms haven't even learned how to ask. So that becomes your job. Deepen your design thinking and servant leadership skills, and then begin to apply them. Learn to lead by listening. Here's where more protests emerge. "But I have no access to clients," you say. It doesn't matter. Your job is to enculturate those disciplines, and you can begin that task at any level inside the firm. No matter that you don't have a seat at the table. You begin by growing a seat at the table wherever you find yourself. You may despair of ever changing an entire firm, much less the industry, or the world. But change is incremental…moment by moment. Don't start with the entire globe, start with the opportunity right in front of you. And this strategy is no better applied than in law firms. They aren't like other business. They're more like archipelago nations: a string of island kingdoms and queendoms stretched out over the horizon. You never take on the whole thing…you start with a single island, and maybe a small one at that. Or a new one…a baby island, just out of law school. And then you begin to serve and design in the way that you have learned. Island by island, the world will begin to change, and you will change with it. If you truly hew to the marks scribed by design thinking and servant leadership, you will quietly lead your firms in the directions they need to go, and some number will follow that path. The profession will be better for it, and you will have lent your hand to making the world a better place. Welcome to the future. ILTA

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