Future of the Law Firm

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As things get literally hotter this summer, one of the “hot” topics on many people’s minds is sustainability. Also, ice cream, but I digress.

At the ILN, we’ve been thinking about sustainability for a while now. As the Network’s only employee, it has made sense for many years that I work remotely from a home office and we used the pandemic as an excuse to go completely paperless at our conferences, except for our name tags. I’ve been paperless at our office for much longer. Continue Reading Sustainability in Professional Legal Organizations

There’s only one answer that my lawyers give when I ask them what they’re curious about when it comes to the practice of law, and that’s generative AI.

We’re not the only ones talking about it. Last year, the Thomson Reuters Institute surveyed more than 440 lawyers in the US, UK, and Canada, and they found that lawyers are talking about it too, and have some very definite opinions. Continue Reading Generative AI: The Hot Topic on Every Lawyer’s Mind

This week, we’re excited to bring you a guest blogger to Zen! Ilona Tkachenko is with PETERKA & PARTNERS, the ILN’s member firm in Ukraine. She is the Marketing Manager for Ukraine for the firm and brings us an excellent post on innovation for legal excellence, which is certainly something that she and her colleagues know something about – and she does my favorite thing, which is to offer practical advice for how to achieve what she’s talking about.

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In the ever-evolving landscape of the legal industry, where tradition and convention have long been seen as the foundations of practice, the integration of innovation has emerged as a game-changing force. The strategic implementation and development of innovation within a law firm are not just trends; they signify a paradigm shift that holds the potential to redefine legal excellence in the 21st century. But what exactly does innovation in the legal industry entail? Continue Reading Innovating Legal Excellence: A Paradigm Shift in the Modern Law Firm

One of the things I like to do is go through old posts of mine to see if there may be some utility in updating them for the current market. What’s the saying? Everything old is new again. And that always seems to be the case – even with content!

But today, I felt like talking about something brand new. So I asked my handy assistant, ChatGPT (the only assistant I can afford at the moment), what I should talk about for leadership in the legal industry. Its reply was this: Continue Reading The Role of Technology and Innovation in Shaping Future Legal Leadership

All right kids – I had an interesting chat this morning with one of my lawyers about the thing he’s most curious about in his practice. More and more, the answer to that question when I ask it has become “artificial intelligence” and “ChatGPT.” I have some additional thoughts on the subject (including the idea that his wife, as a teacher, said that homework is becoming irrelevant because she’s tired of reading the same ChatGPT-submitted answers over and over), but I wanted to try a little exercise for today’s post.Continue Reading Embracing Change: 5 Ways to Navigate the Legal Landscape in the Digital Era

I’m fresh off of a 12-day whirlwind business trip.

I traveled 14,983 miles over 19 flights and 1 bus trip. I visited six countries (while transiting through a total of 11 countries). I didn’t get very much sleep or eat nearly enough. But I certainly accomplished the goals that I set out to when I planned this trip, even if I might not organize six flights for one day the next time around.
Continue Reading Do we Deserve to Thrive…and not just Survive…at Work?

My title today comes from Luvvie Ajayi Jones, whose new book Rising Troublemaker: A Fear-Fighter Manual for Teens, comes out today (yes, my copy for my oldest niece arrives today too). Luvvie is one of my favorite authors, speakers, self-professed “troublemakers,” and the reason I’m mentioning her today is that the book I’m currently reading has me all fired up and her words this morning brought me some comfort (more on that shortly).

I’m reading The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard and Daniel Susskind. And if you know me at all and follow this blog, I’m sure you’re wondering how such a book has got me in a lather – truthfully, I agree with almost all of the predictions in the book, which is unfortunately terribly dry and academic (Richard already has me blocked on Twitter for some unknown reason, so this post won’t fix our relationship). I’ve read his other tomes in earnest and enjoyed his previous speeches, but I am trudging my way through this manual from 2015 like I’m wading through oatmeal.
Continue Reading What Makes You Different is Your Superpower

If you’ve been here a while, you know that I like to look back to find out whether the predictions that we made in the past ever came true – we know that the legal market likes to move slowly, but how slowly? Is the industry that we imagined ten or fifteen years ago where we really are today?

It’s hard to believe that the great recession was 13/14 years ago already, but it’s true. And that means that in the years following the recession, we were all making big promises for change and a “new normal.” (I know, I know, we’re entering yet another “new normal” following the pandemic, which of course only reminds us that the only constant is change.)
Continue Reading Did We Ever Adjust to that “New Normal”?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about the tendency to want to slip back into old pre-COVID ways of life and what some of our barriers to change might be (here and here). In fact, Law.com recently posted an article about “As COVID Fears Ease, Remote Work Is Slowly Losing Popularity,” [subscription may be required], in which they said,

The number of law firm leaders, attorneys and staff who expect to work from home frequently dropped significantly between 2020 and 2021, according to the The 2021 National Legal Sector Benchmark Survey Results published by Cushman & Wakefield in conjunction with ALM Intelligence and Law.com.

Roughly 70% of respondents, which include 336 firm leaders, attorneys and staff from various law firms, said that they expect to regularly work remotely when asked in the second quarter of last year. Asked again earlier this year, just half responded the same way.”

I can hear some of you saying, “okay, so what? Why does it really matter if we go back to our pre-COVID way of working? Wasn’t that working for most of us?”

Was it?
Continue Reading Motivating Change in a Post-COVID World

We’re slowly, slowly easing back into a post-COVID world (maybe? Delta variants, anyone?) and with that brings a lot of stress and a lot of change. Potentially.

As we’ve discussed over the past couple of weeks, there may be some temptation to slip back into “the way we’ve always done things,” and while that may feel comfortable and familiar, it’s not a good enough reason to do it. And if you are thinking that you can get away with doing it at your law firm, take heed – recent studies and articles are saying, not so fast:
Continue Reading What if our Post-COVID Barriers to Change are…People?