The Psychology of Legal Innovation
Abstract
Lawyers contain all of the latent creativity required to shape their personal and professional worlds. Unlocking that potential is a matter of expectation and exposition. Cost pressure and urgency have produced a narrow framing error in the way we think about legal innovation. The pressure to do more with less (and faster) is real, but the bigger picture involves a fundamental transformation in the means of production of legal knowledge and advice. The strategy for the future of legal must involve both incrementally innovating to solve the immediate pain point of cost and time pressure, and radically innovating to reimagine the way that law and lawyers create and preserve value for their clients. There are clear evidence based methods for creating the conditions for innovation. Telstra’s Legal Innovation Forum is examined as a case study of how to implement innovation within a legal team.