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“Are pilots running airlines?” asks Lourdes Slater, the CEO of Karta Legal, a woman-owned consultancy firm with a focus on legal process improvement. “Lawyers are skilled at their art but many not possess the business know-how or time transform their practices,” she says.
Lourdes’s mission is simple — to innovate the practice of law following this sequence: People, process, and then technology. She uses design thinking and business process improvement tools such as Lean Six Sigma and Agile Legal Project Management to get you there. So, how do you teach the proverbial old dog new tricks? Lourdes shared three insights.
Why v. Way: Identify Your Challenges
“The first step is to identify the nature of the barrier to innovation,” Lourdes says. She continues, “We collaborate with our clients to determine if the barrier is a lack of will — not being sold on the ‘why’ — or not knowing the ‘way’ — lacking the know-how to get there.” According to Lourdes, those are different challenges that should be addressed differently.
Shift From Warrior to Business Mentality
If motivation is intertwined with reward value and reward value is influenced by past experience, we can easily see why lawyers need a reboot. “Lawyers traditionally have been rewarded for perfection. The ‘leave no stone unturned’ approach is taught early and forcefully. Mistakes are frowned upon, a missed legal authority in a brief is not easily forgiven, and the consequences can be serious.” Lourdes observes.
She explains, “We are never taught efficiency, but the opposite. Early on with the Socratic method in law school, what we are taught are the virtues of resiliency and over preparation. Generally speaking, lawyers don’t see themselves as business people but as warriors.” Lourdes believes that lawyers must shift their mindset from warriors to business professionals, who get rewarded on efficiency and value creation.
A Third-Party Facilitator May Be a Perfect Reality Check
According to Lourdes, “For innovation to take hold in your organization, we need to make the business case loud and clear and present the innovative behavior as rewarding.” She explains, “There are many ways we can accomplish this depending on the type of innovation and organization implementing it. In every instance, however, you have to start at the top of the chain. Without ‘the will’ of the owners and stakeholders, your initiative will fail.”
She recommends, “If you are neither the owner or the stakeholder, but are tasked with change management at your organization, because the owner/stakeholder has heard this is the ‘thing to do,’ not because they are truly ‘willing’ to change, seek outside help to facilitate the engagement and commitment of the key players, owners or stakeholders of your organization.” According to Lourdes, a facilitator with the experience and ability to communicate the reason for the “will” and the path for the “way” to your owners and stakeholders may be the key to success.
Pilots, in fact, do not run airlines. Likewise, in the era of the Digital Revolution, lawyers can’t afford to run firms and departments in the same way we have been doing in the past. We need to bring strong business and operational skills into the mix. With that in mind, Lourdes’s mission is to work with organizations to facilitate innovation. Finding the obstacles, whether internal or external; changing the mindset, from warrior to business person; and assisting you to get the buy-in you need to get you there.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw, an organization dedicated to preparing women in-house attorneys to become general counsels and legal leaders, and WISE to help female law firm partners become rainmakers. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.