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

“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.

We’ve all gotten excited because the pandemic has made us believe that we can now be innovative – firms that were previously stuck were forced to become fully remote in a matter of days or weeks. Most court systems are now paperless. We’re e-signing documents and discussing hybrid working. What else is on the horizon?!?

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Continue Reading It’s Past Time to Innovate for Radical Success

“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 a section of my bookshelf that’s dedicated to business books on my “to read” list – I love to read, but I’d rather pick up a mystery and plow through it than bury my nose into what feels like a textbook. But when I do, I’m more often than not pleasantly surprised by the inspiration that it affords me, and the comfort that it gives me in following some of my own plans and ideas moving forward. One such book is Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup (not new to many of you, I’m sure). I’m about halfway through this book that promises to show me how “today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.”

“But law firms aren’t startups and lawyers are entrepreneurs,” I can hear you saying.

What if we were? 
Continue Reading Three Truths About Innovating for Radical Success

clem-onojeghuo-122041Any time you pick your head up from the daily work you’re doing in the legal industry, “change” is the drumbeat that you hear.

Nowhere was that more apparent to me than at last week’s CLOC Institute – for those of you who aren’t familiar with CLOC, it’s the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. They’re a relatively new group in the industry, bringing together legal operations professionals for networking, education, to share best practices, and really, to drive change. But they’re more than just legal ops – in fact, their mission states quite clearly that this drive for change involves working with “other core corporate legal industry players” in addition to legal operations professionals. Their goal is to “optimize the legal service delivery models needed by small, medium and large legal departments to support their clients,” and they recognize that this can only be done together. 
Continue Reading CLOC: Change is a Drumbeat