Legally Innovative: How to Maximise Your Legal W.O.W [Ways of Working]

BE BOLD

|

BE CURIOUS

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BE DISRUPTIVE

LEGALLY I N N OVAT I V E

HOW TO

M A X I M I S E YO U R L E G A L W. O .W [ WAY S O F W O R K I N G ]

Anna

L ozynski

Guest Contributor

PROFESSOR

SCOTT W E S T FA H L H A R VA R D

L AW

LEGALLY I N N OVAT I V E

HOW TO

M A X I M I S E YO U R L E G A L W. O .W [ WAY S O F W O R K I N G ]

Anna

L ozynski

For everyone in my personal and professional tribes - past, present and future

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DISCLAIMER this e-book is designed to inspire, invigorate and/or illuminate Š Anna Lozynski 2018

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, no part of this book may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comments only and based on the personal experience of the author, and does not represent professional advice.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author disclaims all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

Cover and internal design by Georgie McKenzie Graphic Design.

Cover and select internal images by Madeline Bourke.

Other internal images: Jake Oates, Bekah Russom, Rhett Wesley, James Peacock & Jens Johnsson.

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C O N T E N T S

Foreword Author’s Note Introduction

PA RT O N E

BE B O L D

Unlock your Innovation Potential 1. Hello Innovation 2. Data that Dazzles 3. Face Your Fear W.O.W. your Mindset

PA RT T WO

BE C U R I O U S

Be an Innovation Maven

4. Network to The Nines 5. Test and Learn to Rise 6. Customise with Consciousness W.O.W. your Relationships

PA RT T H R E E

BE D I S R U P T I V E

Claim Your Innovation Power 7. Implement with Inspiration 8. Cultivate A Brand 9. Leave A Legacy W.O.W. your Legal Presence

About the Author Endnotes Appreciations

Legally Innovative | Contents | 9

FOREWORD Scott A. Westfahl Harvard Law School Professor of Practice and Director, Executive Education

It is truly an honor to write this foreword for Anna Lozynski’s Legally Innovative: How to Maximise Your Legal W.O.W. I first met Anna when she attended the Leadership in Corporate Counsel executive education program that we host each year at Harvard Law School. Among a group of 45 in-house leaders from top companies across the globe, Anna electrified our classroom with her bold, creative ideas and transformative energy.

Our faculty knew we would be hearing her name again soon as a leader and an innovator, and we weren’t wrong. Since we met her three years ago, Anna has been a lightning rod for new ideas and one of the most forward-thinking general counsel of her generation.

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Anna’s mission and this terrific e-book come at a critical time for the legal profession. As she points out, the role of in-house counsel in shaping corporate norms, culture and strategy has never been more important. As my Harvard colleague Professor David Wilkins and I outlined in our 2017 Stanford Law Review article, we need to be preparing the next generation of lawyers with a different mindset and different tools across three key dimensions: first, the technical legal skills we have always emphasized in legal education; second, professional skills – including leadership, teamwork and innovation – that we have almost completely ignored; and third, networks and their importance to generating new ideas and solving the complex, interdisciplinary problems that will be at the core i of what lawyers DO in the future. I am thrilled that Legally Innovative directly aims at each of these fundamental building blocks.

I will confess here that I do not really enjoy reading books about innovation, in part because the medium of a book itself is hardly innovative. To make things worse, books that purport to be about innovation almost always

resort to the same tired formula of using twenty pages at a time to tell a single story of success or failure simply to convey one (fairly obvious) lesson. Legally Innovative takes the opposite approach and I love Anna for it: like a jazz musician, she riffs on critical themes and deliberately provokes you to think of your own ideas and to join in on the jam. You aren’t bogged down in long stories – you are given a framework and tools and some helpful, encouraging guidance. Particularly with her W.O.W. Goals, she gives you a roadmap for how to take these ideas forward and play, customize and innovate with them on your own and with your legal team. It is that kind of practical, real-world, positive approach that we need to encourage and support in our profession.

I strongly suggest you focus on Anna’s lessons around adopting a positive mindset and using networks to generate new ideas.

Four years ago, I started teaching law students and law firm and in-house leaders about innovation, principally through the lens of human centered design. I am excited to report that once we are able to break through the Legally Innovative | Foreword | 11

negative, risk-focused mindset for which lawyers are professionally selected and often highly paid, we lawyers can be highly and quickly creative. The key is to step out of our normal role and start looking for analogies – things that work in other disciplines, professions and businesses – and start brainstorming about how we can adapt outside ideas to improve legal service delivery and solve complex legal problems. As Anna points out in this e-book, expanding your network is critical to that kind of problem solving – you won’t find those analogies easily if you are a highly-specialized, headin-the-sand kind of lawyer.

In 1521, shortly after his ex-communication from the Catholic Church, Martin Luther wrote a famous letter to a friend in which he recommended that we “sin boldly”. Generations of theologians have debated his meaning and the context in which he wrote that letter, but to me that quote has come to have separate significance, particularly as one who is urgently preaching the need for lawyers to innovate.

It is time for us to challenge conventional approaches, 12

leverage new technologies and build the rich, collaborative and interdisciplinary networks that will be critical to the legal profession’s destiny. We may have to question and break some rules and then ask for grace afterwards, as we learn and iterate from our pilot efforts. But that’s the messy stuff of innovation everywhere.

Let’s get going - I hope that Legally Innovative sparks you to join us in this effort!

Legally Innovative | Foreword | 13

AUTHOR'S

Note

Congratulations my learn-ed friend on being bold and curious enough to download this e-book.

Since popping the lid on the legal transformation jar in 2015, legal innovation has totally become my jam. It’s a topic and a mindset about which I am deeply passionate, and find myself easily able to geek out on. Unsurprisingly then, I have relished all the opportunities to talk in the media and at conferences about being “legally innovative”.

One day in the middle of 2017, after repeatedly being asked how I came to drink the “legal innovation Kool-Aid” and feeling as if the momentum around the concept needed greater action and cut through, I decided to go out on a whim and write this e-book hoping to spread the word on a wider scale.

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In essence, I believe that • Legal Innovation is invigorating; • Change is energising; and • Efficiency will never go out of fashion.

Our natural lawyer-esque attitudes towards legal innovation and transformation are contagious.

As Jonathan Cainer forecasts, it's as if each of us is a stately home, with rooms – even entire floors – waiting to be explored. And the doors to the legal innovation mansion are yet to be fully opened and discovered. For some of us, our mindset, relationships and legal presence may just need a new lick of paint. For others, a full scale renovation may be required.

In today’s ever changing and dynamic business environment, it is my humble view that the time is upon our profession to dramatically enhance the way we deliver our legal services, and to maximise our legal W.O.W [Ways of Working].

forward in leaps and bounds and transformed at an unprecedented pace. We were game to practice law differently. Together, we contributed to and influenced the legal innovation phenomenon.

We transformed it from the new normal to just normal.

After each of the three parts of this e-book, you will be prompted to do some transformation focused exercises aka W.O.W Goals, to help unlock your legal innovation potential, be an innovation maven, and claim your innovation power.

No matter where you fit into the legal hierarchy or how you rate your current level of Innovation Intelligence (what I call, IQ 2.0), I am excited to share some legal innovation principles and practical tips with you.

Let’s get down to the business of being Legally Innovative.

AnnA

We should not feel threatened or daunted. We should think of it as presenting a monumental opportunity to not just talk about, but through implementation, evolve our innovation intelligence across the profession.

It is not inconceivable that in 5, 10 or 20 years’ time, our profession might identify that around 2018 something significantly shifted across the industry; something “clicked”. Because we moved Legally Innovative | Author's Note | 15

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

The

future

has already

arrived. not

It is just

evenly

distributed yet.

William Gibson

Legally Innovative | Introduction | 17

We live and operate in an era underpinned by complexity.

Technology permeates society we no longer go on the internet; we live on the internet. Artificial intelligence or robotic process automation has been touted as the next business game changer.

Regulation is on the rise. Change is the only constant in business.

Disruption is the new normal.

The transformation of the Finance, HR and IT industries started in the mid-90s. These are classic back end functions which have now been elevated in status and expressly part of the C-suite.

Comparatively, it’s fair to say that the legal profession as a whole is lagging behind in terms of its transformation. Yet the godfather ii of in-house Ben W Heineman Jr advances that the role and value of in-house counsel has significantly transformed, in fact undergone a revolution, in both responsibility iii and status over the past 25 years.

Regardless of which part of the legal profession is leading the transformation lag, to borrow a phrase from the Australian High Court in an iconic intellectual iv property case from 1959, things are getting “excitingly unpredictable” in the legal marketplace. A marketplace which is worth some AUD$11billion v to the Australian economy, and $800billion globally.

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Indeed in the present economy, practising law is no longer black and white. It is not even grey anymore. Today, we are practising law in full colour.

Globally, it is becoming the new normal for General Counsel (GC) to wear multiple hats; that is, to have direct responsibility for functions beyond “just" Legal.

On the one side, many GCs are also executives, and on the other, counsel the CEO and Board of Directors. Company reputations are vulnerable to a completely new set of crises: social media, terrorism, geopolitics, and cyber risk just to name a few.

Ergo the role of the lawyer is becoming more and more business critical, but also less clear cut. The business of lawyering has become far more complex. In this landscape, while the steadfast duties of a lawyer proclaimed under oath remain unchanged, the currency of old school lawyering is in flux.

The value of bedside manner is going up in the face of a highly competitive and client driven market. In Australia in the early to mid-2000s there was a stigma around law firm secondments.

They were typically reserved only for those solicitors who were overtly practical rather than purely technical (and therefore not ear marked as high potentials for the partnership track). Now

secondments are aspirational in the eyes of a lawyer, and certainly capture the attention (and perhaps may contribute to the retention) of millennial legal eagles. I am hopeful that secondments will one day be available to clients on an ex gratia basis as strategies for finessing a lawyer’s bedside manner, and to round them out as service providers.

Why? Technical expertise is a given and taken for granted, but it’s the soft skills – our EQ that is the (not so) new legal commodity.

As the value of EQ for lawyers has appreciated, it’s not outlandish then to suggest that innovation intelligence (what I call IQ 2.0) will be the next hot stock on the legal stock exchange, and rise in value sooner than we think. Don’t miss this hot tip – start investing now.

Smathers, a Michigan based attorney working in the legal tech space, observes that 20th century lawyers were “I-shaped” - they had deep legal knowledge and skills - but 21st-century lawyers must be “T-shaped.” A T-shaped lawyer still has deep legal expertise but also has the ability to collaborate across many disciplines such as technology, business, data analytics and security.

George Beaton, Melbourne Law School Professor and co-author of Remaking Law Firms, advances that there is absolutely no reason why the legal industry cannot enjoy

digitisation in the same manner that other industries are. And with similar consequences: being more client-centric and data driven. He divides the market into two: “Big Law” and “New Law”. (You’ll see those references throughout).

Like any executive GC and lawyer, I am “busy”, stretched and am managing a to-do list and email inbox that could do with a serious diet. What is legally unknown and legally unanticipated keeps me lying awake at night. As does the ongoing pressure of doing more with less, (or doing more with the same head count), and being perceived as proactive.

In 2015, three years into my role as an executive level General Counsel for the Australian and New Zealand subsidiaries of the world’s largest beauty company, two things came acutely to light.

First, as a small legal team it was becoming an insurmountable challenge to both effectively and responsively service our growing fast-paced businesses across Australia and New Zealand.

Secondly, as the Company announced its global ambition to lead a digital revolution of its industry, it seemed obvious that so too innovation and digitisation should become part of the legal function’s strategy, in order to be able to do more, and to align with the Company’s global and local digital objectives.

Legally Innovative | Introduction | 19

It wasn’t enough to consider innovation as a “project”, it needed to be core.

I have learned a lot as we have transformed the operations of the Australia and New Zealand legal function. It started with a decision to be bold by adopting a progressive mindset on a full-time basis, opening up my eyes to and becoming au fait with the legal tech market in Australia (and to an extent overseas as it existed back in 2015).

This has evolved into implementing data collection for the legal team, getting comfortable with learning through testing, and implementing changes with inspired action. That learning never stops (which I love).

That’s the beauty of viewing the legal services world through a lens of continuous improvement.

Over the course of my networking (both online and offline), I have observed a pattern in the responses from lawyers about legal innovation, which spans the full gamut of emojis. Some find the concept inspiring. Some find the whole concept overwhelming and/or threatening. Others look royally confused and start thinking about all of the risks (probably as they log into their internet banking, ahem). Then there is my favourite judgmental question about what I am doing with all my and my team’s “free” time now that the business can self-service - what wishful thinking! If I were to group all these reactions, they would fall into one big bucket labelled “Fear”.

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The whole concept of legal innovation can tightly trap us generally risk averse and change resistant lawyers into fear-based thinking. It can also generate strong scepticism about whether it is even a lawyer’s role to innovate. Indeed, working with technology takes us firmly out of our lawyering comfort zones. It can leave us potentially worried for our jobs, and concerned about how we may be perceived (less favourably) by others, and manage change effectively. More about that later. Granted, there is no textbook on the subject. It’s not yet a core part of our legal education systems or formal training.

As mentioned above, this means that the transformation of the legal industry is happening magnificently slowly, despite our constant discussion about it. There isn’t enough data being collected to dazzle our business colleagues about our productivity and value, or to understand the legal function’s blind spots and/or areas for improvement. There needs to be a greater willingness and tolerance to give legal innovation a chance.

We need to nurture and recruit more innovation mavens to spread the legal innovation yuletide.

Even as a fearless legal innovator, there are highs and lows. The ins and outs of coding are not (yet) taught at law schools or at law firms, which can make interacting with IT operators foreign.

Like anything new, legal innovation is time consuming, and requires fierce prioritising in the face of being consumed by the day to day. It’s a classic example of short term pain, long term gain.

Testing phases can in turn test our sense of perfectionism and need for being in control of a situation or matter. The whole journey can be one big steep and overwhelming learning curve. Customisation requires patience and just the right amount of consciousness. Being a change agent and pioneering can also be a little lonely, but that’s where networking and being clear about your why and how for innovating can be both useful and powerful.

Above all, it breeds and shapes the lawyer of the future, one which I believe has to possess the trifecta of legal intelligences – TQ (technical), EQ (emotional) and IQ 2.0 (innovation).

So, find a standing desk (they say sitting is the new smoking), step away from your inbox, and be ready to take a sip of that legal innovation Kool-Aid. It is time to learn how to maximise your legal W.O.W [Ways of Working].

Are you in?

Swiping those low (and fear based) moments aside, I have found that innovation breeds an infectious spirit of continuous improvement. It stimulates a child-like curiosity for the new and unimaginable.

It provides a development stream for flat in-house structures as well as a giddy feeling of huge achievement, great stakeholder feedback and engagement with the legal function. It creates an opportunity for networking with legal entrepreneurs. It necessitates forward thinking and proactive problem solving.

It supports in changing the perception of the classic legal function from a sunken cost to a valued business centre.

Legally Innovative | Introduction | 21

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P A R T

O N E

|

BE B O L D

UNLOCK YOUR

Innovation Potential

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P A R T

O N E

| P R E V I E W

BE B O L D UNLOCK YOUR

Innovation Potential Hello Innovation Why Starting Small breeds Big Success

Data that Dazzles Why Numbers + Insights = Value

Face your Fear Why Mindset is Everything

Transform your Mindset

Legally Innovative | Be Bold | Preview | 25

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Legally Innovative | Section | 27

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B E

B O L D

| O N E

HELLO I N N OVAT I O N

If you

always what you do always did, you will

always what you get always got Albert Einstein

Legally Innovative | Be Bold | One | 29

Ah, Innovation. Eternally Sexy.

Relevant. Aspirational. Favourite Child. The Headline Act. With the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution, hail the evergreen buzzword and business badge of honour. It’s like a powerful Silicon Valley channelling cocktail designed to be shaken and/or stirred, depending on its end consumer.

OK Google. Tell. Us. More.

What is Disruptive Innovation?

In 1995, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christiansen coined the term “disruptive innovation” referring to a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors. It is the ultimate kind of innovation. Over time, the term has been used loosely to describe any situation in which an industry is shaken up and not merely stirred. Think the Apple iPhone and Nokia. Think Instagram and Kodak.

Think Netflix and Blockbuster.

For Google, innovation is about removing friction for users. Innovation for Google-rs bears a strong improvisational element. Anticipating is regarded as next level innovating.

Marissa Mayer, former CEO of 30

Yahoo defines innovation as being born from the interaction between constraint and vision.

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something vi old. CEO and Co-Founder of IDEO Tom Kelley regards cool technology alone as not enough.

Innovation is bigger than a product vii or a technological platform.

In the abstract, the term innovation seems to mean the creation of something new. Its main objective is value add transformation for the end consumer. Innovation is not business as usual. Innovation is not invention (which may come as a relief to some lawyers).

George Bernard Shaw supposed that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. And in this day and age, the genderspecific pronouns could in fact be replaced with “lawyer".

Shaw’s quote is a convenient segue to the perennial question. Let’s upfront bust an important myth about innovation and the legal sector.

Is it a lawyer’s role to innovate?

I say “Heck yeah”!

The hype is real, fellow legal practitioners. Innovation ought

to be permanently in vogue. It is not a fad. It is absolutely part of our roles to drive efficiency and turn our minds to maximising the operation of a legal function.

In his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations Everett M Rogers was the first to formally describe how innovations spread across society. He posits that humans can be broken into five segments – innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%).

In Australia, 77% of legal functions believe that innovation is key to how they approach work in the ix next few years. Yet, only 10% of GCs in Australia are innovating x effectively. In the UK, 78% of lawyers believe that technology xi in a law firm is critical. In the USA, more than 280 legal technology start-ups have raised $757 million since 2012, according to xii the research firm CB Insights.

The opportunity is ripe for each of us to up the ante, given the rapid pace of technology-fuelled change, in both legal tech and non-legal tech. Being some 20 years behind our shared services siblings, this means that legal innovation presents our profession and its lawyers with a fantastic leadership xiii (and business) opportunity.

And that’s just one of many benefits of legal transformation.

Benefits of Innovation Innovation does not only lead to success (efficiency, profit, vigour), but also optimisation. According to Tony Robbins, optimisation simply means that you take a bunch of little things that don’t seem very difficult to change, and all of those little changes have a multiplying effect and you get a giant change.

Innovation also drives value.

Whether us lawyers like it or not, the business community generally thinks pure, technical, black-letter legal skills are largely irrelevant, or they see limited value in them.

Research shows that business acumen, innovation and being solutions orientated are the skills that businesses are valuing.

These are not skills that are easy for many lawyers to develop, particularly because they’re not skills that are overly focused on or xiv developed in traditional law firms.

Innovation is known to flow best when ideas are a bit hairy or crazy, when there is a willingness to colour outside of the existing lines or to redraw them. It means having the chutzpah to do things a little differently, to redefine the “norm”, to go where others have not gone before. It also requires a willingness to give an idea a fair go, and owning the outcome either way. It means letting go of your fear of failure. It means changing your mindset.

Legally Innovative | Be Bold | One | 31

Innovation in a legal context does not always have to involve technology (even though it is the ultimate generator of efficiency for the legal team and the business).

It can be also about modernising and/or optimising the way the legal team operates. As Jason Ryan from Lexvoco said at a conference we spoke at (together with Wells Church from Integreon) in August 2017, legal innovation can involve no tech, low tech or high tech. How low or high tech you go just depends on the degree of efficiency an in-house legal team desires to achieve.

In terms of managing workload, we will cover the role of data collection next, but in brief, consider using an agile methodology by way of a Kanban wall, having regular stand ups to complement formal WIP (Work In Progress) meetings, or having a team WhatsApp group or SMS group which includes your legal suppliers. Look for opportunities to brief New Law firms to gain the benefit of alternative fee arrangements, where a culture of doing things differently is inherent, and the mindset a little more naturally nimble. Hand pick open-minded external providers that are willing to go on the legal innovation journey with you and your team.

In terms of training, consider sending business colleagues 32

to CLEs (continuing legal education sessions) at law firms to complement an in-house legal training program. Make in-house legal training creative and even fun (!). Design the calendar invite so it is memorable. Avoid expressly mentioning the law to humanise and make the take away principles accessible. Serve some chocolates and lollies during the session, or if the numbers are smaller have the legal team shout the attendees a round of coffees. This stuff sounds so simple (and lots of it is) but trust me, it goes a long way. Create catchy videos to debunk complex legal issues - don’t be afraid to role play and have business colleagues act as lawyers and lawyers act as Finance and Marketing colleagues, to encourage learning in a different way. Legal training need not be entirely straight laced; it can be delivered in a way that sticks with the relevant audience. Assuming you know your audience, aim to deliver the unexpected (obviously within professional confines) in order to make it an experience.

In terms of career enhancement opportunities, there are examples of secondments in the Australian marketplace that have switched up the typical secondment of law firm lawyer to in-house. Can two bigger in-house legal teams join forces and benefit from a secondment?

Are there opportunities for any

born and bred in-house lawyers to enjoy a reverse secondment, from in-house to law firm? With the rise of lawyers working in legal tech, is there an opportunity for New Law practitioners to second into Big Law environments, and vice versa? Can our grad programs involve a rotation through a legal tech provider as part of qualifying? Are we talking enough about career opportunities in the legal innovation area with and at Universities? Most Universities have a Board member from a law firm, but how about having one from in-house or from legal tech?

every innovation - disruptive or not - shaken or stirred - begins life as xv an experiment, and a willingness to make some changes.

Seth Godin in The Purple Cow unabashedly states that it’s not about waiting until a leader demonstrates a breakthrough idea, and copying it. Nor does one need to start with an outrageous ambition of being the next Netflix of the Law. There is huge merit in starting small, but thinking big.

That’s why I like to think of legal innovation as a journey.

In terms of communications, we cover off cultivating a brand in part three, but for now note that branding and PR for the legal function (yes, you have read correctly) is a “thing”.

The sky really is the limit. It’s just about thinking outside of the box, and just as importantly making a firm commitment to give it a go, without attachment to the success of the outcome.

Many of these measures mentioned require little if not zero budget. It can be fuelled with creativity, persuasion, energy, passion and enthusiasm, or funded via another department’s budget if at all possible. (Another way of being creative).

The critical take away here is that Legally Innovative | Be Bold | One | 33

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B E

B O L D

| T W O

DATA T H AT DA Z Z L E S

If you

can't measure it, you can't see it BrenĂŠ Brown

Legally Innovative | Be Bold | Two | 35

To help harness your innovation potential, let’s discover the wonderful world of data.

We generate insights and integrate data into our everyday lives both knowingly and unwittingly.

From DNA tests, targeted ads, programmatic media buying, wearable devices (think FITBITs, tech togs, yoga tights, UV patches, smart watches), to geolocations and maps. Remember Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal?

Whether you like it or not, you are a walking piece of information. In the information and digital ages, we each leave a potentially insightful sprinkle of data everywhere we go.

To quote Australian singer Deborah Conway “It’s only the beginning”.

In 2018 data and analytics can't be ignored — the prediction is clear: analytics will drive major innovation and disrupt established business models in the coming years. Organisational structures and processes are set to expand to include and accommodate teams of data analysts, data engineers and Insights-as-a-Service specialists to help companies capitalise and transform it into valuable insights.

Data is Big Increasingly, data is becoming a company’s strategic asset class.

Our virtual movements are golden 36

fodder for marketers, consumer insight-ers, and data miners such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and any other forward thinking company seduced by this influential new commodity.

It’s also surfacing as the cornerstone of any forward thinking in-house legal function. As General Counsel and individual contributors, we may have a strong intuitive and qualitative understanding of the volume and sources of work flowing into the legal team, and that the team is generally always “busy”. Yet it can be a challenge to convince our CEOs and CFOs of our actual productivity, to easily write that business case, demonstrate savings or simply speak in a language that resonates with our business colleagues, across all levels.

Data solves all of those problems.

Data is Insightful For lawyers, the concept of data collection seems to trigger an instant association with time sheets, given our law firm backgrounds. However, most inhouse lawyers do not miss time sheets and their productivity being defined by six-minute intervals. The intention is not to replicate law firm productivity and value measures in the in-house environment. Rather, the point is to allow in-house

lawyers to more meaningfully articulate why their capacity is at “headless chook levels” and where they are spending their time.

Such a dashboard can be used in a weekly legal team meeting, at WIPs (Work in Progress meetings) or all the way up to Board level.

It’s not a time sheet, it’s more like a digitised productivity or value measurement dashboard.

Most teams have some basic quantitative analysis they track, typically focused around budget in terms of external law firm spend, cost savings and perhaps a list of settled cases or debts recovered (often used to show how the legal team is saving the business money by avoiding litigation).

That is what I call defensive data. In today’s data driven and ROI (return on investment) focused business world, I would suggest those reference points are not enough, particularly if your audience is non-legal.

Dynamic data is what you want.

What convinced me to foray into data collection was the way our company’s IT Helpdesk tracked its productivity and “matters”. The penny dropped that there were parallels here in that the legal function is a helpdesk of sorts. Our legal function was similarly capable of collecting and presenting similar data about its operations.

In 2016, the then General Counsel of Brisbane Airports won the Association of Corporate Counsel Australia Corporate Lawyer of the Year Award because of the sophisticated data collection initiative she had led. It inspired me to no longer ignore my instincts and make an ongoing date with data.

So how can you get started? Know that it’s ok to KISS on your first date with data. In other words, Keep It Simple, Stupid at the outset. Data collection needs to be sustainable and easily integrated into the day to day of a legal function and the workload of its team members.

Mindfully consider the process and number of data variables to ensure the collection or entry process is as quick and painless as possible. For example, if you wanted to mount a business case to automate an agreement via a legal app, you could start with a table in Word. Alternatively, see if the potential legal tech provider can arm you with a fancier spreadsheet to present that data in a more sophisticated fashion.

Remember, it’s OK to start small but think big.

No legal function was ever criticised by any business stakeholder for being proactive.

Data allows a legal function to better articulate the business Legally Innovative | Be Bold | Two | 37

problem that requires resolution and potential investment, with say implementation of a legal tech solution or a workflow redesign and/or automation. It gives you statistical insights.

• strategic importance (low, medium, high or 1-10);

Alternatively, look to piggyback off software and/or tools already existing within the organisation, including Excel! A quick coffee with your IT Director could lead to being granted access to existing software licences as well as to a few hours of an IT resource to help configure the legal team’s dashboard or as I call it, a value measurement tool. (The IT team is definitely a necessary companion for your legal innovation journey).

• type of matter (eg. contract review, property etc);

As your comfort and needs evolve, explore taking your relationship with data to the next level. In version 1, you might track only the number of issues - the business unit, and effort (low, medium, high). In version 2, you might separate jurisdictions if that’s applicable. Version 3 could involve launching a fully-fledged legal matter management software.

Depending on your reporting requirements, some suggested data collection variables could include: • number of matters/issues; • effort (low, medium, high); • potential reputational risk (low, medium, high); 38

• material value of matter; • time spent and/or including responsiveness;

• division/department of origin; • budget estimate • budget actual; • region (if the function covers multiple jurisdictions).

Data is Business Friendly Individually, and as an in-house legal community, we know how valuable lawyers are. We therefore should not be hesitant about prioritising the collection of data if it quantitatively proves that point. Let’s not continue to learn the hard way by, as one example, not being able to justify additional resources, in favour of having insights at the ready to share. Let’s stop talking about our value defensively on legal panels at conferences, or indeed with our business stakeholders.

Data ensures your legal function is “seen” in all its dazzling and hard working glory.

Do not let cost be a barrier to entry. If you do indeed piggyback off existing IT software (as mentioned above), no budget may

be required. For the rest, sheer drive and enthusiasm for the cause may be all that is needed.

The point is to keep the eye on the prize – being armed with quants and insights. Quants and insights on which you can move the needle if improvement is required, or on which you can capitalise in terms of realising efficiency.

Data tells a Story The struggle to curate and collect data may be real, as it does mean adding a little data entry time to your everyday. Trust that the effort will be both gratifying and validating. Data can raise the consciousness of your business colleagues about how much pressure the legal department is under at any given point. It may also serve to explain a perceived responsiveness issue.

Conversely, it can help the legal team shift towards becoming more focused on allocating their time and effort to what is business critical. Knowing where the churn is and how much volume it drives, together with an appetite to improve that, is all a step in the right direction towards transformation.

Further, don’t forget to tap into the insights available from all of your stakeholders, internal and external.

Data from an internal stakeholder survey for example can provide

a legal function with valuable insights. For Jodie Baker from Xakia data drives “value creation” opportunities: how is the team perceived, what are their strengths and areas for improvement, and what is the overall satisfaction which can then be used as a benchmark moving forward.

Consider surveying external legal providers too, as this can also be insightful. Plus it’s doing things a little differently which might be refreshing for these relationships, and make them feel more of a two way street. Law firms do not often get asked for feedback about how their clients are faring, or get to rate them!

Data may give you the impetus to implement some SLAs (service level agreements) across the business. According to Andrew Mellett, CEO of Plexus, data allows you to define when, how and what kind of legal work does and ought to flow through the legal function. The “how” for example could be threefold: (1) in-house lawyers, (2) self-service options via legal tech tools, and (3) external law firm support. A service level agreement with your business colleagues need not be an agreement in the traditional sense, it can be a sassy looking and “on brand” grid or matrix.

On the basis that Scientia potentia est, “knowledge is power”, us inLegally Innovative | Be Bold | Two | 39

house legal peeps need to ensure we “don’t be 2000 and late” as chimed by The Black Eyed Peas. As companies start to covet “big data” and spend more and more time in “The Cloud/s” (pun intended) the quest for reliable, informed and intelligent decision making is becoming the next “big must have”. There’s simply no time left for any more excuses for leaving it off the legal team agenda.

Data is clearly hot stuff. It’s more of a game changing perfect match with a legal function than any sceptics may have you believe, and definitely worth the investment and effort. It gives you a dynamic perspective on the team’s performance. Just as importantly, data can help allay any fears or concerns about taking that bold step towards innovating or transforming the way the function delivers legal services.

Measurement is a key to success, for all pockets of a business, which includes legal.

Because numbers don’t lie.

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FA C E YOUR FEAR

If you hear a voice within you say

'you cannot paint,'

then by all means

paint

that and

will be silenced voice

Vincent Van Gogh

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FEAR. False Evidence Appearing Real.

Fear. The mother of all avoidance, falsehood and untested assumptions.

Fear. It slows us down, holds us back and has us second guess. Fear.

It riddles us with doubt, messes with our confidence, and invites worry. Fear. It stares down at courage and is just as contagious.

Fear. It thwarts innovation, paralyses original thinking and closes our minds to change.

Psychologists call humans cognitive misers, and have identified various ways that we shut out information in order to process more efficiently.

We have perception bias where we look for information that affirms what we already think. And we have attribution error in which we readily blame behavior on personality rather than circumstance. There are numerous more, causing us to stereotype, cling to first impressions, or make snap decisions. All of these perceptual shortcuts we create to save mental energy can lead us to make hasty and incomplete judgments about the xvii people and world around us.

In this way, humans are what Ellen Langer, Harvard Psychology Professor, and author describes as “mindless”. Langer defines mindlessness as an active state of mind characterised by a reliance on distractions, being trapped in 44

a single perspective, insensitive to context, rule and routine governed, typically in error but rarely in doubt, and where the past over-determines xviii the present. She posits that we need to be mindful about being mindless as everything we think we know is wrong in some context.

Lawyers have incredible minds.

Often self-described as “unique”, lawyers have many a superpower.

Seasoned mental gymnasts, we spend years learning and developing our ability to “think like a lawyer”; that is, looking at a problem from all angles, practising emotional disentanglement, deducing a conclusion from general rules, constructing syllogisms, inferring general rules from patterns of specifics, questioning everything, and accepting ambiguity. We are the ultimate judges and problem solvers.

We can also be control freaks.

As masters of lateral thinking, lawyers ought to be ripe for having an open mind to the unconventional. Yet, give a scenario to a lawyer and it’s likely they will immediately start thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Conversely, give a scenario to a non-lawyer and it’s likely that they will immediately start thinking about all the things that could go right.

What’s the difference? Mindset.

Our minds are incredibly powerful.

Thoughts, thinking patterns, beliefs and assumptions dictate our mindsets. Our mindset about a situation determines our response. This means that our legal superpowers can very quickly turn into our kryptonite because a lawyer’s mindset tends to be problem focused - pessimistic, critical, sceptical, cynical, controlling, risk adverse and change resistant. Yet we know that innovation is all about being solutions focused requiring an appetite for change, open mindedness and progressive thought. It is not guided by precedent but by novelty.

Developing an Innovation Mindset When it comes to the adoption rate of legal innovation as an industry, perhaps it’s likely that fear has been running the show, and us lawyers might xxi not have been aware of it.

Positive psychology teaches us that if we label innovation as complicated, time consuming, a threat to our jobs, not part of a lawyer’s role, risky, inferior lawyering, too hard, a distraction from our important day jobs, confusing, and asking for failure, we are fear-full and therefore mindless. However, if we label innovation positively as enhancing, invigorating, an

opportunity to learn, grow, drive efficiency and be transformative, we become more fearless.

Similarly, we can continue to be afraid to try because we are afraid to fail. Instead, like perennial innovators we can recharacterise failure as endearing and follow Elon Musk (cofounder of Paypal and Tesla) to see that if things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

We can also keep shying away from seeking feedback about our lawyering only to lose valuable insights – feedback drives innovation potential. Assuming that something is working well because this is the way it’s always been done encourages a change resistant thought pattern. If you really are doing things the way they’ve always been done, there’s almost certainly a better way.

We all know that when we step out of our comfort zone that is when the magic happens.

We all suffer from self-doubt but innovation is about hope. The hope that there is something better that can have an impact. Self-doubt has its roots in fear. We’ve all failed at some point, and innovation is all about failure. More ideas will fail than succeed, which is something to get used to. The key is not to let your self-doubt talk you out xxii of trying. As Tim Ferris puts it in his TedTalk, what we fear doing Legally Innovative | Be Bold | Three | 45

most is often exactly what we need to do. In other words, while familiarity is safe and certain, we are only able to discover what we are truly capable of by walking through the proverbial dark forest.

Do not buy into the commonly held fear that innovation will replace lawyers’ jobs. A recent study by McKinsey concluded that based on currently available technology, only a maximum of 23% of a xxiii lawyer’s job can be automated.

Of course, technology is changing rapidly, but for now, any artificial intelligence still requires a level of human scrutiny and involvement.

I know first-hand that the creation of an automated agreement certainly does not happen by some miracle. It still takes heavy human lawyering and judgment, especially if one follows the golden rule of automation which is not to automate an inferior process or agreement to create a user friendly app. Technology still lacks EQ – well for now, anyway.

For in-house counsel especially, a change in mindset might also require being unafraid to “Let Go”, and say “No”. According to legal research, the most progressive functions understand that stakeholder value is generated from a myriad of risk tradexxiv offs. Trying to “eliminate risk” (which is arguably fear driven) across the countless decisions in a business is an impossible 46

and ungrateful mission.

It’s a misconceived notion that involving legal in everything is necessary. To quote Elsa from Disney’s Frozen - Let It Go. Instead, pour your energy into reframing innovation as an attitude and a practice. Practise having a killer "can do" open mindset.

Practice the art of catching yourself when self-doubt and fear creeps in. Become an agent not just for one change, but continuous change. It will lead to a remarkable innovation upward spiral.

Unlocking your legal innovation potential and finding your innovation power starts with you.

Changing your mindset at every moment is within your absolute discretion. It does not cost anything to be wired differently, or indeed to re-wire and shift your perspective.

Welcome the strange - take a different view; change your routine; look in a different direction.

Welcome the random. Welcome xxv the unexpected. And according to Langer, the benefits of mindfulness will be pretty extensive. Being more aware and in tune to the outside world can make you more productive, creative, charismatic and alert to new and xxvi interesting opportunities.

It is your choice. Forget Everything And Run, or Face Everything And xxvii Rise.

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Remember

L E G A L I N N O VAT I O N

is Invigorating

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W . O . W P A R T

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TRANSFORM YO U R

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Mindset

GOAL #2 Develop an appetite for data, and to start #datamining.

GOAL #1 Become an expert witness of your own pain points.

1. Brainstorm what legal innovation means for you as an individual, and as a team.

2. Create a Pain Points Page. Record ideas as they come to you. Where are you starting to hear some (legitimate) niggles from your stakeholders about process, cost, and/or responsiveness?

3. As a team, try to quantify the work of the legal function over the last day, week, and then three or six months, only by reference to numbers.

4. Reflect on why you and your team members feel hesitant about data collection.

Now reframe those “fears” and formulate and agree on the “why” and benefits for capturing data.

5. As a team, dedicate some time to brainstorm what your ideal legal dashboard could look like – make sure the fields can be applied across the whole function.

Caution: don’t over engineer it. Keep it Simple, Stupid at least initially.

6. Make some decisions around how you want to bring it to life and when: via an Excel spreadsheet, via IT internally, or via a legal matter management software provider.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help!

GOAL #3 Become an expert witness of your fears about legal innovation. Fear is a compass showing you where to go. It’s time to do some #feardigging.

7. On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is fearful and 10 is fearless), critically rate your own mindset when it comes to legal innovation.

8. Record your “fears” about legal innovation.

Now re-write those fears as positive intentions.

9. Spend a week asking “Why Not?” and see what shifts happens.

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P A R T

T W O

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BE C U R I O U S

BE AN

Innovation Maven

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BE C U R I O U S BE AN

Innovation Maven

4

5

6

Network to The Nines Why Growing your Network Grows your IQ 2.0

Test and Learn to Rise Why you should Choose Progress over Perfection

Customise with Consciousness Why Collaboration is the New Service Excellence

Transform your Relationships

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NETWORK TO THE NINES

Talk with

who

people

make you

see the world differently The Vibrant Mind

Legally Innovative | Be Curious | Four | 59

Now that you’re wearing your Be Bold superhero cape, let’s continue on the journey by getting curious about networking and how it supports an innovation mindset.

I came to understand the power of networks at sixteen. Organising a meaningful legal-related work experience placement was quite the task with parents who were newish immigrants, and who did not know any lawyers.

Like, not one. As I watched other students secure placements at television networks and blue chip corporates via family or other connections, I learned a very crucial lesson: “It’s who you know”.

Since that time, I have maintained a real zest for making personal and professional connections and expanding my human and virtual networks. There have been countless instances in my life where networking has shined and served. We can all probably recall an instance where we have met someone at one point only for it to make sense later. The beauty of connections is that they tend to foster more connections in an endless web of opportunities.

There’s something special about the vast professional world feeling small, and being a part of weaving the connection web.

As someone aptly pinned on Pinterest, a simple hello could lead to a million things 60

The best part is that it’s never too late to start growing your network, or your network wings.

To that end, there are plenty of resources at your disposal on the art of and the how to, of networking. Practice allows you to find your networking groove.

Persist. Believe in it. Learn to enjoy it if you are coming at it from a place of fear. In my view, the “secret” is nothing more than having an open mind (hello again beloved mindset), perhaps “acting as if” (if you lack confidence), and putting yourself out there. It will feel more natural with the passing of time. Let the prospect of meeting someone who completely changes your perspective, or who could rock your world, keep a networking diligence about you. They say that everyone we meet really is there to teach us something.

Expanding your IQ 2.0 I owe the accumulation of my legal innovation intelligence, what I call IQ 2.0, almost entirely to networking. Over a six-month period, alongside my usual work schedule, I prioritised establishing connections with legal tech providers around the world (by phone and in person) to get comfortable with using technology as a way of working.

Technology development is

complex, yet the legal tech market globally remains relatively infant.

With a little dedication and effort, it is certainly not impossible to understand (and then stay abreast of) who’s who in the legal tech zoo.

Only in the last while has the legal sector definitely awakened to the rise of legal operations as big legal business. In the USA and Europe, it is becoming commonplace for General Counsel to work closely with their Legal Operations Director to maximise the efficiency and use of software within a legal department. Associations such as CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) globally now exist.

There are online legal innovation handbooks such as the one released by Israel based LawGeex.

Legal tech pioneers such as Plexus are running Australian Thought Leaders Forums. 2018 marks the third year of the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in Australia; the same event made its debut in 2018 for the legal community in South Africa. There are similar initiatives across Asia Pacific and Europe.

The evolution of the existence of these resources should make networking and knowledge building in the legal innovation space that little bit less daunting.

Leverage your legal peers here.

Tap into the legal operations

community for #inspo and contacts.

Reach out to legal innovation thought leaders on LinkedIn to see if they can point you in the right direction. Perhaps move attending a legal innovation conference to the top of your learning and development wish list.

Paradoxically, technology reduces the number of interactions we need to have with humans. As noted earlier, it also makes the world feel small, and in some ways makes it easier to forge connections across the globe. Yet, when it comes to networking, human interaction remains vital. This is especially so in the legal tech space, as providers are still finding their marketing feet.

In most cases a phone call or a 30-minute coffee is necessary in order to properly understand the software and tools on offer. From what I understand from several providers, there’s a concern about putting product demos online.

My other hot tip is to apply a huge dose of perspective when hearing feedback through the grapevine about a legal tech vendor or software. Through your networking, you may hear conflicting feedback about providers, and their demos and/or pitches. Treat these as opinions only and not necessarily determinative. Meet a provider and make your own mind up about their capability and fit with your legal team and business.

Legally Innovative | Be Curious | Four | 61

Don’t let another lawyer’s fears discourage you. If you feel it appropriate, pass any feedback or industry rumors about their software capability onto the legal tech provider. That’s how our legal innovation community will grow and hopefully flourish. For now, legal tech will only be as good as the humans who are building and using it. It’s a team effort.

In the matter of Synergies v Silos As the legal sector becomes more pressured and is subject to more frequent major shifts, there seems to be a growing divide between what George Beaton describes as “Big Law” and “New Law”. In Australia, there is a disproportionate number of law schools pumping out law school graduates for whom there are insufficient graduate positions. The law associations tend to be territorial and perhaps not as collaborative as they could or ought to be. The inhouse community is increasing in numbers and is enjoying a louder share of voice. As the legal eco-system seems to be in a constant state of uncertainty, in my view the silos within the legal profession are amplifying. Of course, silos slow down innovation.

At a legal innovation panel in Sydney in August 2017 (cohosted by Lawcadia and global 62

trade organisation Buying Legal Council), I commented that lawyers had to view legal technology providers as an opportunity to bring synergies, not as a threat; but either way they had to understand what they were doing.

Being a lawyer today means that you have to build a healthy and intimate relationship with technology trends, and then more specifically legal innovation trends and providers. Sooner than we think, it will just become the new normal, and the divide (and missed opportunities) between those who are in the know, and those who are not will be beyond huge.

To that end, I think the legal profession could learn a lot from our marketing / advertising agency and IT colleagues who are far more agile and accustomed to working together for the benefit of a client account.

Think about how you as an individual and in-house legal team can inspire synergies by gently forcing collaboration between external lawyers and perhaps a legal tech provider in order to generate legal innovation.

Separately, it is useful to keep your appointed law firms abreast of any legal transformation in the event that it will in turn involve the law firms changing the way they support you, including adopting

legal tech via your preferred legal tech software provider. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that law firms should really be taking more of a lead here. It might help if law firms overcame the mindset that they need to innovate internally from scratch or make a solution absolutely perfect. I’m not sure law firms classifying legal tech providers as their competitors is being client focused or forward thinking either… #justsaying.

Create Connections Do your handpicked, fabulous and talented external lawyers who all work on your account all know one another?

The essence of Seth Godin’s work is that the internet has revived a human social unit in the form of “tribes”, giving ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. Harness your power to create a "legal tribe" to foster a more collaborative and connected spirit amongst law firm lawyers and legal tech providers. Consider hosting a legal business update attended by your external legal suppliers with the CEO as guest speaker. At first instance, it may feel like a little professional social experiment. In time, it will feel like a tight knit tribe.

Once the tribe has met all of its members, consider how

you may continue the flow of communication, for example via a WhatsApp group, or closed Facebook community group. Using that medium, informally share industry/legal news, important business/company updates when it’s kosher to do so, or what fun and exciting things the legal team is doing around the office.

Together, as one extended legal team, get to know one another and your respective businesses better.

The aim is to help break down some boundaries in law land.

The overarching point of networking is to build relationships. Networking is of course more than just collecting business cards, attending events or adding LinkedIn contacts. It is also about establishing connections.

Information gathering. Listening.

Being inspired by others, and other things, and their success, but more importantly any failures.

Look Outside to Expand Inside After attending an evening coding 101 course on HTML and CSS, it made me reflect and appreciate all the more the work of our legal tech providers (as well as internal digital colleagues). Working with IT and digital professionals is fascinating. We do not speak the same language, and can have different agendas. But when it works, it’s pretty magical!

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Following tech trends from within the legal industry but more importantly, outside of it, lights the innovation inspiration within.

Not all of us work for the world’s most innovative companies. It’s pretty cool stuff and definitely makes the mind boggle, so it should not feel like a chore or a burden on the “to do” list. Learning from others can spark a curiosity to learn more, cause reflection and let your mind ask “Why Not?” and “What If” in respect of your own legal backyard.

Gary Liberson sums it up perfectly.

He describes great networkers as "connectors" with an uncanny ability to find "mavens" in diverse fields. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, describes a "connector" as a person with a special gift for bringing the world together.

A "maven" is a gatherer of information and impressions, and so is often the first to pick up on new or emerging trends.

Instead of trying to break silos, we need to identify those individuals who naturally know xxviii how to connect them.

Networking used to be about “who you know” but is now also about “who knows you”. Technology and social media make us more socially and professionally intertwined than before. Innovation will not thrive 64

in a silo. Legal innovation won’t accelerate without connection.

Connection is a gift. And change doesn’t happen smoothly without a supportive tribe.

If you adopt the mindset that knowing what’s new and who’s new in legal tech (and tech more broadly) is just part of lawyering in 2018 and beyond, then it should be easy to prioritise, just as you do your continuing professional development points.

So get out there - the legal innovation universe needs to know who you are.

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TEST AND LEARN TO RISE

What if

fall?

Oh I

but my darling,

What if you fly?

Erin Hanson

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I’m curious, have you ever uttered the words “I’m not trying to be perfect, I’m just trying to do it right”?

In Japan, broken objects are often repaired with gold. The flaw is seen as a unique piece of the object’s history, which adds to its beauty. As a general rule, lawyers by virtue of their legal upbringing and personalities seek to be flawless on the job. It’s just how we have been programmed.

What if by inherently feeling unsafe to fail, lawyers are holding themselves back from striking innovation gold? What if striving for perfection is holding us back from progressing legal innovation?

“Perfectionism never happens in a vacuum. It touches xxx everyone around us”.

Scientist and inventor Thomas Edison knew 1000 ways how to not make a lightbulb. The failure of any given experiment didn’t block his work, it simply opened new areas for exploration and xxix created new learning. For IDEO’s founder Tom Kelley, creating a culture of innovation means living with continuous experimentation “as opposed to just sticking to the knitting”. In doing so, it drives excitement, fosters change and a spirit of continuous improvement.

In other words, to make legal transformation successful and well adopted, one needs to be 68

prepared to break a process and sometimes entirely rebuild it from the ground up.

Let’s explore some innovation methodologies to calm any perfectionist nerves.

Prototyping Prototyping is an innovation technique which involves acting before you have the answers. It’s about taking chances, stumbling a little and then course correcting.

It involves quickly creating the solution, then going through multiple iterations of testing it with users and fabricating new versions.

The cost of fabrication should be low and the process of making xxxi and testing rapid. Google takes prototyping to the next level with pre-prototyping. It has introduced this step before hatching a new idea in order to test, as quickly and as cheaply as possible, that the idea is worth pursuing.

Design Thinking Design thinking may be more of a lawyer’s cup of tea as it offers a more structured innovation framework. The aim of the methodology is to solve complex problems by finding desirable solutions. Therefore a design mindset is not problem focused, it is solutions focused and action oriented (subject to technological feasibility). It draws

upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systematic reasoning to explore various permutations as desired outcomes for the benefit of the end user. The framework has eight phases: Discovery, (Re) frame opportunity, Incubate, Ideate/Illuminate, Evaluate/ Refine ideas, Rapid prototype/ xxxii test, Deliver, Iterate & Scale.

Six Sigma And then there is Six Sigma.

Developed in 1986 by a Motorola engineer, it was central to General Electric’s business strategy under the reign of CEO Jack Welch. With its origins in mathematical theory, there are two major methodologies used within Six Sigma, both of which are composed of five sections, according to the 2005 book JURAN Institute Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond by Joseph A. De Feo and William Barnard.

The first is DMAIC used primarily for improving existing business processes. It involves: • Defining the problem and the project goals • Measuring in detail the various aspects of the current process • Analysing the data to, among other things, find the root defects in a process • Improving the process • Controlling how the process is done in the future.

The second is DMADV typically used to create new processes and new products or services. It involves: • Defining the project goals • Measuring the critical components of the process and the product capabilities • Analysing the data and developing various designs for the process, eventually picking the best one • Designing and testing details of the process • Verifying the design by running simulations and a pilot program, and then handing over the process to the client.

There are several management tools within Six Sigma. One such tool is “Five Whys”. The method is simple: simply state the final problem (the car wouldn’t start, I was late to work again today) and then ask the question “why”, breaking down the issue to its root cause. In these two cases, it might be because I didn’t maintain the car properly and because I needed to leave my house earlier to get to work on time.

Another tool is the CTQ (criticalto-quality) Tree. Its signature tree diagram breaks down the components of a process that produces the features needed in your product and service if you xxxiii wish to have satisfied customers.

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DIY – Test and Learn Adopting a test and learn philosophy (whether via a structured framework or creating your own intuitively) makes everyone (particularly us lawyers) ride the wave of change more gently, especially if there is actual or potential resistance.

Labelling an innovation as a pilot, a "test and learn" trial or an experiment makes it feel less permanent to begin with.

It cushions any potential fall.

Instead of making a permanent change, when you make your first foray into automation consider committing initially to a trial period only. During the pilot, stakeholders can enjoy a transition period from the old process to the new, and provide feedback. If it’s a positive trial, the legal team won’t need to look back. Off the back of the success of the “trial” and gaining some trust equity, more legal innovation can easily flow.

Forming small focus groups comprising of stakeholders which will be frequent users of any legal innovation tool can also be successful. By taking those stakeholders on a change journey with the legal team and the change, you can create a product that is valued and championed by the business before it is launch ready. This can mean launching version 1 of, say, an app so the 70

business can get on with using it (having been brought into the fold that it’s not perfect), while version 2 is being developed in parallel. As we all know from iOS notifications, technology and upgrades come hand in hand. In some cases, the technology you imagine does not exist yet, or is not a priority on a legal tech supplier’s product road map. It’s fluid. Just accept that it’s ok to press go, launch (and just ensure to communicate clearly about it) even if it’s not perfect.

The moral of the story is we have to fall in order to rise. Give yourself the permission to “shake it off” (Taylor Swift style). Whichever your innovation methodology of choice, don't be under any illusion that an innovation idea or its execution needs to be “perfect” or flawless.

If it’s not (of which there is a fair chance), it does not make you inferior, mediocre or negligent.

In the legal innovation space, the opposite is true. Implementing a calculated and businessbacked improvement can only lead to garnering respect from your colleagues, and foster a more dogged determination to nail the improved process or legal tech implementation.

Striving for perfection also chews up a lot of time. In my view, it’s better to gain momentum and keep progressing, rather than

taking two years to launch one solution and losing team gusto and faith in working differently in the process. This of course depends on team size. What it does highlight though is that if you make legal innovation a KPI and strategic priority, you will keep the eye on the prize and set ambitious deadlines. You will also follow through. Depending on your team size (but even then), see if you can launch an innovation in months or weeks. As my yoga teacher chimes, stretching is so good for you even it hurts a little in the process!

Just go for it, all in. Head down, (tech) bum up.

The stakes are high, yes. But, in the legal innovation space, progress will always trump perfection. Consumers are used to technology bugs; it’s part of our device eco-system. Thus what I am saying here is that trying to be perfect with your legal innovation is not making good progress.

Instead, trustfully ask yourself: What if a mild bit of wrong led to a wild bit of innovation right?  

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Sometimes,

reaching and out taking someone's is the hand

beginning of

a

journey. At other times, it

allowing another to take yours is

Vera Nazarian

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Have you given your legal UX a workout lately? In the fitness world, it’s well established that optimal movement relies on a strong core.

In the legal ring, it seems that lawyers conscious of two letters in the alphabet, UX (User Experience), are able to pack so much more punch.

So then, are your legal services fit for purpose?

The Evolution of Service Excellence As a fellow of Stanford Law Centre and lecturer at Stanford Institute of Design (the d.school), Margaret Hagen posits, “There’s a glaring absence of experience in law. Whether it’s the layperson or the seasoned lawyer… no one is thinking about the actual experience or the human part of it.”

For instance, I’ve always found it curious that lawyers will generate a precedent in Word, even though our end users prefer and are more comfortable using Excel. Unconsciously, and as mentioned earlier, humans are wired to believe that if things are being done one way, there is no other way. I’d suggest lawyers have that buried deeper in their subconscious than the average human by reason of their intense training.

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I know we think we are making it easier for the business, but are we in fact in all cases?

In-house lawyers will believe that the business “has” to come to them with its issues. Most legal departments work hard and devote much energy towards building a culture of accessibility, approachability, and educating their stakeholders that not all legal risks are borne equal. When in actual fact, the business can quickly decide that it doesn’t have to come to legal, especially if they repeatedly don’t value the experience or interaction. In other words, your reputation will precede you.

In the digital landscape, UX defines one’s reputation. There’s no ability to sandwich less than ideal bedside manner with a conversation about the weekend, the weather or the news of a mutual friend. In other words, technology cannot sweet talk its way out of a #situ. The first impression counts. Each step and question of the smart form generating the final agreement electronically, for example, counts.

It should be smooth. It should be simple. Intuitive. Look good. We are less forgiving when technology is not working when and how we want it to. Our patience runs thinner because our expectations are a little higher. We want it all, and we want it instantly.

Think of the last time as a consumer you had a fabulous user experience. What was it that stood out about it? I bet one of the things you will identify is the level of personalisation and customisation (all the rage right now). Whether it’s digitising a contract repository, creating an FAQ page (or a Legal Wiki app) on the company’s intranet page, automating agreements or checklists, or using enabling apps to electronically sign documents or run comparisons, adopting legal technology is a fabulous opportunity to redesign and redefine the legal UX for the end user.

Feedback is Everything Lawyers want to feel and be regarded as special; different from the business. We endure a lot and often work remarkably hard to gain our legal wisdom and maintain our technical prowess. We take our professional oath seriously by holding ourselves account to the highest ethical and fiduciary duties.

We are the moral conscience, the mast of independence.

It may feel unjust to then be labelled by our end users as a mere service provider. Whether it’s a voice in the user’s head, or an e-billing platform where in-house lawyers can rate and review a law firm experience for other users to see, it’s fair to say that lawyers comfort level with feedback is for the most part, #awkward. Yet

the essence of customisation is about encouraging a constant feedback cycle. And the feedback may not always be glowing.

This means being prepared to work with your stakeholders in a way that you may not have before, while upholding one’s professional duties. Be aware that customisation expectations can create a healthy tension or frustration between legal and the business.

Yes, legal has the steering wheel, but if you are upgrading a process or implementing legal tech for the benefit of the business, be prepared to be OK with your stakeholder being the ultimate back seat driver!

Customisation may also highlight that our legal preferences will not always be the same as our end users’ preferences. Balancing those competing tensions can be tricky but enlightening.

P.S. In this context the customer is usually right…

Exercise Customisation with Moderation Conscious customisation is to be distinguished from conscientious customisation. Progress over perfection, yeah? Be prepared to compromise on the customisation capacity with some legal tech products, or process upgrades.

Knowing and being aware of any audience involves learning from Legally Innovative | Be Curious | Six | 75

them, creating a healthy feedback loop during the development and testing phases and working collaboratively in a way that is unifying.

No matter how well you claim to know the business, I guarantee that you will get to know it even better.

Automating an agreement involves critically and consciously assessing the existing precedent and its contents. It’s like playing a game of Jeopardy where you need to ask the questions first and then anticipate the various permutations of the answer, dictated by the needs of your stakeholders and company requirements. That means having as many conversations as necessary to understand all of those permutations, in order to assess how you can most efficiently cover the field.

It may be cost inefficient to customise certain services or products. In turn, the legal tech provider may have limited customisation capacity, or none at all if they are offering an off-the-shelf product. In this regard, efficiency is often a good independent litmus test.

Always consider the UX of a legal tech product from the perspective of the end user.

If you as a lawyer find it clunky, aesthetically displeasing and confusing and it is intended to be a business tool, then please save your business colleagues from it!

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Embrace a Collaborative Spirit Further, the foundation of successful automation is a great process or agreement.

It may be that a process needs to be finessed before automating it. Digitisation won’t fix a bad or inefficient process.

So effectively start from scratch and apply a fresh set of eyes.

By consciously focusing on the UX when building and implementing legal innovation, it forces us as lawyers to think more about the human experience of receiving legal advice and guidance.

In this way, championing the change about the way the legal team delivers its services becomes a collaborative effort. It becomes a joint effort to deliver an awesome business improvement and drive efficiency. Just as importantly, it fosters a greater spirit of playing for the same team because you will have together enlivened a curiosity and awareness of what it is like to walk in each other’s shoes.

Those who exercise innovation together, stay together!

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Remember

CHANGE

is Energising

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TRANSFORM YO U R

Relationships

GOAL #1 #collab your heart out.

1. Think about your current network, who in it can connect you to someone in the legal innovation space?

2. Carve out time in your diary over the next three months and prioritise networking, or saying yes to that next event invitation.

3. Make a list of where your current legal service providers can collaborate and engage your legal panel to give it a go.

GOAL #2 Focus on your legal team UX .

4. Out of 10 how would you rate your current legal service UX? Have you conducted an internal survey recently?

GOAL #3 Test and learn, stat.

6. Don’t overcomplicate it – use one of the pain points identified in Part One and undertake to tweak it a little. See what happens. Ask for feedback.

(Please tell me you've done a legal team satisfaction survey?

If not, just get started - SurveyMonkey [or similar free providers] is a great place to start!)

5. Find one process and #collab with your business to improve the UX.

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T H R E E

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BE D I S R U P T I V E

CLAIM YOUR

Innovation Power

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T H R E E

| P R E V I E W

BE D I S R U P T I V E CLAIM YOUR

Innovation Power

7

8

9

Implement with Inspiration Why Salted Caramel is better than Vanilla for Managing Change

Cultivate A Brand Why a Legal Team needs a Brand and Marketing Strategy

Leave A Legacy Why Fitting Out should be the new Fitting In

Transform Your Legal Presence

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| S E V E N

IMPLEMENT W I T H I N S P I R AT I O N

It isn't

confidence that comes first,

taking action.

but

Confidence follows

action

Scott Allan

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First published in 1969, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a classic children’s picture book by Eric Carle. It follows a caterpillar eating its way through a variety of foods before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.

At this final stage of being Legally Innovative, you too are now ready to pupate (NB. I chose this word deliberately so it would be memorable). You’ve traversed through the curliest parts of Being Bold, Being Curious and so it’s time to shed any last “holding you back” layers, leave that cosy cocoon of “same same” and wholeheartedly, Be Disruptive.

Like with any change or transformation, it gets easier (and more exhilarating) with practice.

I’m sure if caterpillars could speak, they would confirm that.

Start with Why As I’ve said before, first impressions count. Meaning when you implement each bit of your legal innovation, aim to do it at such a vibration that it is unforgettable. Because implementation that is packed with passion and inspiration is destined to penetrate with punch.

Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why surmises that all the great leaders of the world are able to inspire when others aren’t, 90

because they are super clear on three tenets to create buy in: Why, How and What. That is, inspiring leaders know without a shadow of doubt that people don’t buy what you do, but why you do it.

It makes for a company mission statement heavily sautéed in unqualified belief. When framed cleverly enough, it need not even mention the company’s core product or service. For example, there is no mention of coffee in Starbucks’ mission, which is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time. Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Of course what is inspirational for one of us may not be inspirational for another.

The point is that vanilla messaging is less likely to create end consumer buy in.

One with a Salted Caramel flavour may. Capiche?

If you think of the classic law firm mission statement, it typically covers off clients, excellence, expertise and possibly something about staff.

One of the most memorable, ergo “salted caramel” law firm mission statements I’ve come across is from a law firm in Sydney (which for the record I’ve not yet briefed and therefore have no association with):

“Law, Done Differently. Marque is a law firm that does not measure the value of its people or its clients in six minute units of time…. We invest in a long term relationship with our clients, and we measure the value of our services in the same way that you do. We have a lot to offer, and we provide it in a way that doesn’t hurt. That’s a small part of the Marque difference.

Finally, lawyers who get it.”

Well that sounds very serious and frank.

Funnelling down from this notion, there’s no point investing company resources, and exerting the team’s energy and the rest, if the launch of the new process or tool isn’t engaging or lacks essential buy in. Understanding why you are launching the new legal innovation is important to have the broader business care about it, and adopt it, sustainably.

It’s beyond action because it doesn’t come from a place of compulsion or a sense of going through the usual motions, but because you want to inspire others. It is invigorating because it’s leading you and others to something great or bigger. It has a fire in its belly that is contagious.

It brings a degree of confidence about the change that is infectious for early adopters, and assuring for any change resistors.

Communicating that why with a bit of creativity, sass, high energy and finesse (and a touch of triumph if appropriate) is important to generate excitement and engagement in support of the change management curve.

Start with a bang!

Manage Change with How and What Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organisation’s goals, processes or xxxiv technologies.

But what if we accepted that change is managed better when it’s implemented with inspired action.

Inspired action is a magical combination of progressive mindset, clear strategy and taking the action with a sense that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning.

You will recall that Rogers breaks up our population into five segments that fall across a bell curve: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority xxxv (34%) and laggards (16%). This means any communication plan around your implementation and thereafter has to speak to your audience, which based on Rogers’ innovation spread means that about half your business colleagues are change resistant.

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It is imperative that your implementation plan is not only crystal clear but also captivating, to ensure consistency of messaging and to gain the best cut through.

This should be the case no matter which media you leverage internally and externally – face to face at business updates, at inductions, via email, on social media and how you to talk about legal innovation casually with your colleagues. The brain is beautifully complex and each of your colleagues will learn (and change) at differing paces.

Work all the comms angles.

Befriend your Comms and/ or PR teams for support.

In my mind, Sinek is spot on when he writes that energy motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure and easy to copy. Charisma is hard to define, near impossible to measure and too elusive to copy.

For instance, it’s not Bill Gates’s passion for computers that inspires us, it’s his underlying optimism that even the most complicated problems can be solved.

Are you getting the flavour?

Creativity Counts By 2020, Creativity will rank #3 in the World Economic Forum’s Top skills needed by employers.

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themselves as creative thinkers and problem solvers but not creative in an artistic sense. To be clear, I’m not suggesting at all that you obtain a qualification in creativity. Creativity flows from a curiosity to examine things from all angles, or to discover “complex possibilities laying dormant in so xxxvi called familiar environments”.

We have touched on the fact that being legally innovative requires an open mindset, and looking outward to grow within. Psychologists say that the aspect of our personality that appears to drive our creativity is called openness. People high in openness may see more in a given situation than the average person. Kaufman and Gregoire in their book Wired to Create explain that the creativity of open people stems from a “drive to cognitive exploration of one’s inner and outer worlds”. We have also touched on that fact that creativity, together with EQ, is a very valuable skill for legal teams of the future to gain a competitive advantage.

Practising law is more colourful and complex than ever, and demands greater creative thinking.

Implementing with inspired action is just an extension of that.

Cocoons are cosy. Having butterflies in your stomach because you have high care factor for what you do, is what will set you apart.

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| E I G H T

C U LT I V AT E A BRAND

brand is a story that is always being told A

Scott Bedbury

Legally Innovative | Be Disruptive | Eight | 95

Human beings love stories. The brain thinks in stories, and is continuously making associations. We make meaning of our experiences by shaping information in emotionally significant ways.

Branding is a lever that helps increase the legal function’s visibility thereby next level integrating it into the business.

And being well integrated is one of the markers of success.

We may think of ourselves as legal scholars, as professionals, as persons having a gravitas of sorts.

It therefore may come as a surprise to realize that what we have been doing all along is learning about legal stories, constructing legal stories, and then telling them.

Why iDentity Matters

Let’s talk about taking legal storytelling to the next important and modern level of team advocacy: a legal team needs its own brand.

Can we get a little deep for a moment? Who would you be without your identity? Strip away your education, social status, your job title, your profession, your qualifications, reputation and those reference points we spend our lives pursuing and building. It’s a little confronting to think about, isn’t it?!

Being Invisible is not a Success Strategy Branding is an asset. Its value to a legal function cannot be overstated in today’s corporate world where we encounter brand promises on a daily basis.

If I were a betting kind of person, I would put serious money on the fact that the marketing and image of legal departments is going to be next big “thing”.

Perception is 9/10 of reality. A legal team brand allows you to help shape that external perception as well as stay true to what the team is trying to achieve. It’s a unique identifier, its own QR code. ths

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With the advent of social media, we are all in the game of marketing, of personal and professional branding, whether as an actor or an observer. Today, we profile subconsciously.

Most of us are quite attached to our identity (sometimes real and sometimes manufactured, hello Instagram). While our perceived identity may differ to our true sense of self, it’s our personal branding which reflects to others how we show up in the world, in the workplace, as lawyers in legal and business teams.

The point here is not to focus on personal branding (but if you haven’t defined it, I would encourage you to do so in the interests of your own career development).

It is rather to think of the legal team as a team influencer, and therefore in need of a shared voice to create a respectable amount of buzz.

Consider employing the expertise of your internal communications colleagues to help animate the presence of the legal team, and define its communication strategy. Do you have a team brand, a set of brand guidelines, and know what you all stand for in terms of a functional mission?

Do you have an up-to-date and meaningful presence on your company’s intranet, or have your team members regularly as part of company communications?

Your team size may warrant having its own blog, or public Instagram page. Think about how the team is internally and externally facing – what more could you be doing here? Do your stakeholders or clients know a little about the person behind the lawyer?

The rise of consumerism and social media has meant that we as individual consumers have developed to expect a strong and diverse palate for memorable branding that sticks. The Nike tick makes you instantly think “Just Do It”. It’s evolved to be that simple and powerful.

A symbol depicting part of a staple fruit draws an instant connection to the world’s leading computer company

and its socially transforming products. So simple, yet so effective. Genius, actually.

Branding Benefits From an outward perspective, great branding conveys, on many levels, the DNA of a product or service to your stakeholders. It visually signals (in an instant) that the legal team is part of the company, is relevant, creative, professional, aligned and unified. It portrays a sense of cohesion and buy in with the broader business values.

It also portrays the personality of the function, its values and culture about what is being offered, how and why. This is useful for first time encounters with the legal team, and engenders trust for frequent users. It’s stakeholder recognition of the visual variety.

From an inward team building perspective, branding generates and fosters a stronger team spirit, unity and belonging to a legal community. There is comfort and a great sense of connectedness to be had when a legal function has a “one team style” by its email signature, font, powerpoint slides, stationery and hash tag/s. This might ring even more true for global legal functions where geography, size and legal jurisdiction naturally create distance.

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Defining the image of the business of the legal team need not be fluffy. Rather, it can be progressive, showcasing that the team is a little (or a lot) clever, sassy and engaging. Use this as an opportunity to recreate the team’s perception and narrative, and get those creative juices flowing in a way that might be surprising. (Note - logos of gavels or scales are not any of these!).

Like with any innovation, if you’re a branding newbie then it’s ok to start small (but think big!). Start with basic branding guidelines and then work your way up to sub-brands for your innovation, or another visible business project.

In sum, consider branding as a visual declaration and affirmation of the team’s core missions and/ or strategies, and an additional “new” way to support a legal team’s transformation (and to attract new talent). It may even make the team feel brand new (pun intended) again. What the legal team does is complex and sometimes mysterious. On the other hand, as we are all consumers in the marketplace, branding might help to further find that “common ground”.

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an important aspect of being an excellent service provider.

I hazard a (confident) guess that the business will welcome your legal team having a story, particularly if it is something they would not have pegged the team to have. Everyone loves a surprise, and a dose of creative inspiration!

After all, lawyers are humans too.

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| N I N E

L E AV E A LEGACY

follow

Do not where the path may lead.

Go instead where there is

no path and leave a trail Ralph Waldo Emerson

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At the end of his song Legacy, Eminem discovers rapping is his, and that having his brain "wired differently" was worth it.

In a relay race, members of a team take turns running while they hold a baton in their fist. Each team member runs a portion of the race, and then they hand the baton over to the next runner. One way to think of your life is to see it as a relay race. That’s how President xxxviii Barack Obama thinks of his life.

In Year 10 of secondary school, the future of our life was constantly called into question. We had to know what we wanted to do because our university choices were just around the corner.

This left most of the year level daunted. I on the other hand never felt more clarity. After a stint of wanting to find a cure for diseases (but then realising I was scared of blood), at sixteen I was hell bent on becoming a lawyer.

And nothing nor no one was going to stop me. Looking back, I can see how discomforting this may have been to my student peers.

As a child I always stood out. It was not always my game plan. Nor did it always serve me. Some things I couldn’t change (apparently my hair was too blonde; my eyes too blue). And others, I didn’t want to - I was incredibly studious, and clear on my #lifegoals.

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Consequently, I was labelled a nerd (with what I thought was my own kind of cool), which amongst teenagers is not the best title to hold. But being an old soul and having a strong and clear vision helped me not get bothered by often being misunderstood (well at least on the surface).

As we mature, we appreciate that life is not a dress rehearsal.

We may contemplate what our life’s purpose is, which may or may not evolve over time. We may become more aware of the memory we wish to leave in our current role, as a leader, and of course in our personal roles.

As a teenager, my after school ritual involved translating the Herald Sun’s (an Australian newspaper) daily horoscope into Polish to my Mum, whose English was not so great. My Mum then and now is fascinated about the celestial world and all that is beyond herself and those most important to her.

The concept of the world being created in seven days after a big bang was always a source of huge fascination to me. I used to imagine that someone or something was controlling each of our respective destinies zooming in and out of pockets of the Earth similar to the functionality of Google Earth as we now enjoy it. To this day,

I am fascinated and in constant awe about the hugeness of the Universe, and that which is beyond planet Earth. Beyond ourselves.

And so, I firmly believe that each of us are the ones responsible for controlling our own destinies, and it's important to remember this along your legal innovation journey.

In building a professional reputation, I invite you to consider what lasting impression you are creating for those around you, and what you intend to leave behind. Are you doing everything within your power to groom your team members to be ready for the future? We choose, and are chosen to be part of a profession and in specific roles. Indeed, we make choices every single day about a range of matters.

I never imagined that I would be one of the pioneers of legal innovation back on my first day at Law School. Nor did I contemplate it would be on the list of strategic priorities when I started my first General Counsel role in 2012. What I do know now is that it is professionally invigorating and has allowed our legal team to learn and grow in new and unimaginable ways.

That’s pretty wow in and of itself.

short to not go after what you want and to take decisions that speak to who you are about a person. Think about what contribution you are making now, and whether that accords with your legacy reputation and what you set out to achieve on your professional adventure.

Harnessing the brilliant and powerful combination that is humans and computers for the legal sector is gaining momentum. Innovation Intelligence (IQ 2.0) will sooner than we think define a lawyer’s relevance, and in time reverence.

So, please don't be a legal innovation stranger. I'd love you to join the baton relay - because the future of modernising the legal profession and the delivery of legal services is missing one big piece of it's puzzle, and that's YOU. I hope now that you are thirstier than ever for that legal innovation Kool-Aid. Lastly, I can't wait to hear all about how you are being Legally Innovative and maximising your legal W.OW.

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Remember

EFFICIENCY WILL

never go out of Fashion

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TRANSFORM YO U R

Legal Presence

GOAL #1 Harness how inspiration makes change easier and more palatable, for the legal team and its lawyers, as well as the business.

1. Does your department have a mission statement? If yes, is it inspiring? If not, what do you think it should be? What does your team think it should be?

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you currently self-rate your stakeholders’ legal team “buy in”?

GOAL #2 Realise it’s time to define your team story, and think of yourself as a start-up legal business.

3. How do you want to be perceived as a team? What are the three qualities you want your colleagues to describe every time they deal with the legal team? How does this relate to your Why? 4. Look at your last legal team satisfaction survey, how is the team perceived and rated?

5. Do you have a copy of your company branding guidelines? What resonates with the team about them?

What doesn’t?

GOAL #3 Hold space for your legacy.

8. In your current role, define your contribution as a leader to the company for which you work?

What legacy are you leaving for yourself?

6. Find some budget, create a design brief, ask your PR & Communications team to connect you with a graphic design agency to create a legal team set of branding guidelines.

7. Use your new branding guidelines at every possible opportunity.

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ABOUT THE

Author

Anna Lozynski was admitted to practice in Australia in 2004, after graduating with honours from Deakin Law School (including a semester exchange to Utrecht University in The Netherlands).

She has completed post graduate studies in Legal Practice & Ethics and Insolvency at Monash Law School, as well as the Corporate Counsel Leadership executive education program at Harvard Law School.

Anna began her career at Minter Ellison, a major Australian law firm in Melbourne, during which time she first worked in Mergers & Acquisitions and then as a Commercial Litigator. Early on in her career, Anna discovered her affinity for in-house practice while on a secondment to the Westpac Group, a major Australian bank in 110

Sydney. Upon returning to private practice after the secondment to hone in on her technical skills, she made a permanent move into the in-house legal sector, working for General Motors, a multinational automotive company, both in Melbourne and Shanghai.

thought leaders called upon to present, podcast and write on the topic of legal innovation and the transformation of legal services delivery, both locally and internationally.

At 31, in 2012 Anna was appointed as the youngest executive and greenfield General Counsel to establish the legal function for the Australian and New Zealand wholly owned subsidiaries of the L’Oréal Group, the world’s largest beauty company.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin. com/in/anna-lozynski

In 2016, Anna was a finalist in the ACC Australia In-House Legal Awards for Corporate Lawyer of the Year. In 2017, Anna was a finalist in both the Lawyers Weekly Australian Law and Women in Law Awards for General Counsel of the Year. Further in 2017 and 2018 Anna and her team were recognised in the GC PowerList Legal 500 for Australia & New Zealand.

Connect with Anna:

Website: www.annalozynski.com Email: hello@annalozynski.com Instagram: @legallyinnovative

Be Bold.

Be Curious.

Be Disruptive.

In 2018, Anna and her team were finalists in the Janders Dean Lexis Nexis APAC Legal Innovation Awards, as well as the ACC Australia Team of the Year InHouse Awards. She also been nominated for the 2018 Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards for General Counsel of the Year.

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i.

Scott A. Westfahl and David B. Wilkins, The Leadership Imperative: A Collaborative Approach to More Professional Development in the Global Age of More for Less, https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/ theleadership-imperative/

ii. Former Group General Counsel of General Electric iii. The Inside Counsel Revolution: resolving the partner-guardian tension (ABA Publishing) iv. National Research Development Corporation v Commissioner of Patents [1959] HCA 67 v. The Legal Profession and the Business of Law Joanne Bagust, Sydney Law Review, Vol 35:27 vi. Peter Drucker vii. The Art of Innovation Tom Kelley viii. https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2016/03/innovation 15-experts-share-innovation-definition/ ix. 2016 Plexus Legal Research x. 2016 Plexus Legal Research

E N D N O T E S

xi. https://www.raconteur.net/legal-innovation-2016 xii. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/technology/lawyers-artificial intelligence.html xiii. Law of Diffusions of Innovation Everett Rogers xiv. how-to-be-a-valued-legal-function xv. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation xvi. https://www.gartner.com/doc/3810464/-planning-guide-data-analytics xvii. https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2015/12/17/how-to keep-an-open-mind/#1b001fa418e3 xviii. langleygroup.com.au xix. http://www.wikihow.com/Think-Like-a-Lawyer xx. Change your mindset, change the game Dr Alia Crum TedxTraverseCity xxi. The Universe Has Your Back Gabrielle Bernstein xxii. http://killerinnovations.com/innovation-attitude/ xxiii. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/technology/lawyers-artificial intelligence.html xxiv. 2016 Thought Leaders Research Plexus xxv. http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/05/25/are-you-open minded-three-ways-to-break-thinking-patterns/ xxvi. https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2015/12/17/how-to keep-an-open-mind/#1b001fa418e3 xxvii. Zig Ziglar xxviii. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-liberson/networking-for innovation_b_926794.html xxix. http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/11/23/theres-no innovation-without-experimentation/ xxx. https://leavinglaw.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/the lawyer%E2%80%99s-demon-perfectionism/ xxxi. http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2015/11/04/prototyping/ xxxii. https://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for innovation/ xxxiii. http://www.sixsigmadaily.com/what-is-six-sigma/ xxxiv. https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/change-management xxxv. Start With Why Simon Sinek xxxvi. https://theconversation.com/people-with-creative-personalities-really do-see-the-world-differently-77083 xxxvii. https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-legal-storytelling-4098154

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xxxviii. https://daringtolivefully.com/leave-a-legacy

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A P P R E C I A T I O N S

small page, Huge Thanks.

There has been a small group of generous souls (you know you are!) who have been a source of incredible fortitude and unwavering encouragement to me over the 14 month period it has taken to bring Legally Innovative to life.

You are each incredible and I am lucky to know you. You make my heart sing, and my eyes sparkle.

Thank you for being you.

My beautiful husband. For believing in me and giving me the space to be creative and dream big. For every day being the best friend and advocate a person could ever ask for. You are my everything.

My editing tribe. For your time, valuable and honest feedback, and asking the right questions.

Your fresh set of eyes together with your unconditional friendship is a gift. I cherish it immensely.

being full of heart and shiny energy, as well as treating this project as if it were your own.

You are the ultimate soul sister.

To Professor Scott Westfahl.

For saying yes to being a part of this project after only seeing a content outline. For dedicating your precious annual leave time to writing the Foreword. It is truly an honour to have your involvement and support.

To Georgie. For sharing your talent, creativity and giving this design project your absolute all.

It is a pleasure to work with you.

And last but not least, to you my reader. The legal profession is all the greater for you being in it.

Thank you for opening your eyes and mind to “do law� differently, and be the best lawyer you can be in 2018 and beyond.

Hugs and Hats off to you all.

My yogi sisterhood. For encouraging me to breathe through the challenges, and showering me with kindness and positive energy.

My colleagues and friends. For believing in me when a case of imposter syndrome kicks in, and for being fabulous teachers and sources of inspiration.

My darling bestie, Natalie Warner.

For always having my back, Legally Innovative | Appreciations | 115