Adaptive Innovation
The Practice
January/February 2019
This issue is dedicated to exploring some of the underlying concepts pertaining to innovation generally, and innovation in the legal professional specifically.
January/February 2019
Adaptive Innovation
As with most other sectors, lawyers have argued that Big Law is different. This article reviews some of the most cited factors predicting and denying the demise of Big Law. We argue that market-imposed values such as quality, efficiency, and return on investment (ROI) will very likely dominate over reputation and comprehensiveness, forcing a fundamental change in many common features of Big Law.
Designs on the Law
One form of innovation that has cut across legal issues and practice settings is design thinking. Perhaps more than any other approach to innovation in recent years, design thinking has taken the world by storm. At its core, design thinking aims to tap into creativity to solve problems with an end-user focus.
Marketplace of Ideas
The term “innovation” is often used without strict attention to its actual meaning; it’s more a buzzword meant to signal an embrace of change than a term rooted in what any given change entails. To help tackle this issue, this article brings the nebulous term of “innovation” down to earth by unpacking what it means on a conceptual level. We look at what innovation is—and isn’t—from two distinct vantage points.
The Harvard Legal Technology Symposium
The Harvard Legal Technology Symposium—a collaboration between the Harvard Association of Law and Business, the Center on the Legal Profession, the Library Innovation Lab, the Journal of Law and Technology, the Harvard Law Entrepreneurship Project, and the Harvard Law and Technology Society—featured panels on technology in law firms, technology in corporate legal departments, new legal roles, and natural language processing, and AI in contracts.
The Law Firm Chief Innovation Officer
Building on years of wider research recently published in her book "Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in the Law," Michele DeStefano examines what the CINO role is intended to do, what it actually does, and what explains the gap between the two.
Venturing into the Unknown
Dan Nova, a partner Highland Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund, recently sat down with David B. Wilkins, faculty director of the Center on the Legal Profession, for a conversation on the future of work.
