Fostering Innovation

Adapt or go extinct

Agenda

Technology Changes FastBusiness Models Change

Innovation In Your Organization

• Legal technology evolves• Delivering Content• Extracting information and knowledge from large

data pools• Predictive coding and analytics

Technology Changes Fast

• Future breakthrough (?)• Text treated as information, not data (semantics)

• Pick 3 of these disruptive technologies• Automated Document Assembly• Relentless Connectivity• Electronic Legal Marketplace• E-Learning• Online Legal Guidance• Legal Open-Sourcing• Closed Legal Communities• Workflow and Project Management• Embedded Legal Knowledge• Online Dispute Resolution• Intelligent Legal Search• Big Data• AI-Based Problem Solving

And It Will Change Faster

• LPO

• Online Legal Services

• Online Storefront

• Alternative Law Firms

New Business Models

• Law firms practices haven’t changed that much over the past few decades

• Disruptive vs. sustaining innovation• Challenge: is ground-breaking innovation for new start-

up firms only? What about existing, traditional law firms?

Survival Of The Fittest

• Stay close to your fee-earners• Set up a structure that promotes and enable

transformation• Crowdsourcing• Reward Failure!

Innovation – Getting the Ideas

• Communicate at all stages.• Identify Champions in the business who will

support you.• Challenge of being a Partnership. 20-60-20

approach.• Optimizing existing practices? Or changing

them?• Patience and Resilience

Innovation – Getting the buy-in

• Innovation is a slow process. Start early.• Learn to Fail Fast• Keep the momentum going but set the right

expectations.• Promote success and start a virtuous cycle.

Innovation – Delivering

• Fight the temptation to stay in your comfort zone• Find your level of risk acceptance• Innovation is a state of mind and a process – not a one-

off

Final Thoughts

Fostering Innovation:Sustaining v. Disruptive Innovations

Presented by:Sally R. Gonzalez

Sally.R.Gonzalez@Outlook.com

Sustaining Innovations

• Sustaining innovations provide improved delivery or performance of an established product or service– Adopters might struggle initially, but can and do

implement them • Most innovations are sustaining• Birthplaces in law firms– Process improvement – Clients– Competitive positioning

Example:

Example:

• “Book of Jargon‘”mobile phone apps for business and legal executives– Aim to help demystify sector

specific terminology and legal / business jargon

– Published on iTunes, iPad & website

Example:

• Client said: “We’ll increase case volume at lower unit cost” and Littler completely re engineered the way matters are handled‐

• Envisioned strategic management of a high volume of administrative ‐agency charges (such as federal, state, and local charges of discrimination), at a fixed, per charge fee‐

• Re engineered the legal process for a client dedicated, team based model ‐ ‐ ‐including distributed, work-at-home lawyers

• Maximized use of technology– To anticipate attorney needs as they conduct research, prepare

responsive documentation and perform legal and risk analysis– To provide transparent, privileged, and real time online access to the ‐

status of the client’s matters, as well as a dashboard of key performance indicators, visual graphics, and reports

– Built on a hosted technology platform developed in collaboration with third-party web-development company that allows

Example:

Source: www.clearspire.com

Disruptive Innovations

• Bring to the market a very different value proposition• Offer worse, not better, performance or quality when they

first arrive, but arrive when the market is ready for something smaller, cheaper, easier, or more convenient

• Almost always start out at the lowest level of the market, or even tap into markets that have previously been invisible

• Offer something that incumbents can’t replicate, even if they wanted to, because the attempt to replicate would tear the incumbent apart by fundamentally undermining its basic production and business model

Fasten Your Seatbelts; George Beaton; June 2013 87 (6) LIJ, p.40

Example:

Example:The Avatar Project

• Sponsored by the 2045 Initiative.

• Goal is "to create technologies enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.”

• Devote attention to “enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society."

A “lawyer” who never sleeps?

Closing Thoughts

• Law firms are well positioned to adopt…– Sustaining business innovation (doesn’t threaten core

business)– Sustaining technology innovation (incrementally

improves efficiency and effectiveness)– Disruptive technology innovation (radically improves

efficiency and effectiveness)

But Can a Law Firm Ever Find The Path to Disruptive Innovation?

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less travelled byAnd that has made all the difference”

Robert Frost,“The Road Not Taken”