By Lindsay Griffiths on “Innovation” is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot these days, right up there with “disruption.” It sounds like something that’s foreign in the legal industry, but it shouldn’t be. Believe it or not, we, too, can be innovative. If you’ve been following along here for a while, you may know that I have … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’re continuing our series on soft skills that lawyers require in order to achieve success. We’ve looked at some suggestions for improving networking and presentation skills, and the next item in our series is raising the level of our business writing. You may feel that this is something that you’re already pretty adept at, since … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’ve been talking about the soft skills that young lawyers need to hone in order to become successful, and how these translate for more experienced lawyers. Another skill I reviewed for the ABA student law blog was that of presentations (and I think we can agree this is something that many of us can work … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’re already almost mid-way through September (can you believe it?) and this time of year can feel like a new beginning! Though January is typically the time for resolutions, September can also feel like a refresh as kids go back to school, and we jump back into the grind after our own summer holidays and … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on If you’re a regular reader of Zen, you know that I’m a big fan of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). They’re working to revolutionize the legal industry, and engage all facets of it to do so. One of the ways that legal departments excel and law firms majorly lag behind is with tracking metrics. … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on In our most recent post, we broke down the art of persuasion, and looked at the styles for change that you may be seeing within your firm. I should also add that there’s really a fourth style too, and that’s the belief that no change is necessary – I didn’t cover this in any depth, … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Change can be intimidating. Whether you find it exciting or not, even those of us who are the most adept at it can find it daunting and exhausting. In the legal industry, where change is historically slow, when it happens at all, it can be even more overwhelming. We’ve been talking an awful lot about … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Continuing our discussion about SmartLaw and the future of the legal industry, which hopefully we can all say with some degree of comfort is here NOW, let’s consider another major theme of HighQ’s recent eBook – the intersection of technology and people. This idea is one that we touched on during our last series on … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’ve been discussing the NEED for change a lot lately, and while many of us may understand the urgency, and have even begun undertaking some steps to effectuate change within our firms and organizations, others may be asking what it actually means to be a leader of change. Fortunately, there are some great resources out … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on This is just a guess, but I suspect that most of us didn’t get into the legal industry because we love data, right? If we loved data, we’d be elsewhere. But…bad news. Data is one of those things that we have to start embracing as the industry changes in order to stay relevant. It sounds … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Altman Weil recently released their “Law Firms in Transition” survey, which is now in its tenth year. The survey, which includes responses from half of US law firms with 50 or more lawyers, was initially developed as a response to the 2008 recession, to help firms understand how other firms were reacting to the marketplace … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’ve had a lot of discussion over the past several years about what the future of legal services will look like, and what critical characteristics and ideas will be necessary for lawyers and law firms to embrace in order to operate within it successfully. Last week, we opened the conversation again with the release of … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Long-time readers of Zen may remember when we first started talking about the future of the law firm and the idea of “SmartLaw” in 2016, when HighQ asked the question “What do you believe lawyers and law firms need to do to prepare for the future of legal services?” Over the course of several posts, … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on If you haven’t had the opportunity to read retired soccer player, Abby Wambach’s remarks to the graduates of Barnard College, it’s worth taking a few minutes to give them a read. Wambach’s speech, and the discussion that we recently had at our Annual Conference with facilitator Wendy Merrill of Strategy Horse, which incorporated the concept … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Today, I’m bringing you a post from an ILN marketer, Amanda Schneider. Amanda is with ILN member firm Epstein Becker Green, where she is the Chief Marketing Officer. Amanda provides tips on how firms can leverage the multigenerational attorney workforce through involvement in business development initiatives. *** It is critical for firms to understand that … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Today, we’re bringing you a special guest post from the folks at Legal Gateway, who have identified the top eight mistakes that in-house counsel make when implementing legal technology that prevents it from being successful. In-house lawyers: this one’s for you, and for our outside counsel readers, consider sharing this with your clients and discussing … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Starting at the top is essential, but you need the right mix of people within your firm to really be successufl. Disney calls this “cast excellence.” The corporate culture at Disney is, by design, well-defined, clear to all, and goal-oriented. It can seem challenging to implement this at a law firm, but I’ve seen it … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on CLOC is a movement. You’ve heard me mention this before, that CLOC (also known as the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) is a community, a movement. It’s a drumbeat. And it’s not going away. But why is it so important for lawyers and law firms to be paying attention? Three reasons.… Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a keynote session focused around Disney’s approach to business excellence. The recap I shared has been among one of my most popular posts, and the advice provided by Jeff Williford from the Disney Institute proves to be timeless. Despite a changing marketplace, the tenets that underlie their success … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on “It’s a community, it’s a movement.” These were among the closing words from Mary O’Carroll, the Head of Legal Operations at Google and CLOC board member, as the first CLOC EMEA Institute wrapped up last week. And for those of us in attendance, you could certainly feel the energy. It was not unlike what we … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on A lot of people I know were happy to see the backside of 2017. But even with the enthusiasm for a new year in our pockets, it can be hard to find the motivation to kickstart our plans and projects as we head back to work this week and find ourselves facing the same day … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Last week, we delved into some methods for leveraging your law firm or referral networks to provide additional value. Building on that theme this week, we’re going to look at three opportunities to develop fertile ground for further relationship and business development within your networks, among your clients, and within your jurisdiction. Content As a recommendation … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Around this time last year, HighQ posed this question to a number of legal industry leaders: What do you believe lawyers and law firms need to do to prepare for the future of legal services?” This resulted in an interesting and in-depth e-book that delved into a variety of answers, many of which overlapped and all … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Like with any relationship, the relationship you have with your law firm network will give back what you put into it. (This is true for any informal referral networks too, by the way) While we wholeheartedly advocate that you join a network with the goal of being able to better serve your clients by offering … Continue Reading
