The Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group Highlights the Top 7 Emerging and Evolving Roles (Part I)

By: Andrew Sprogis, Chief Innovation Officer, Katten Muchin

It is hard to escape the barrage of information and updates about technology and innovation in the legal profession. Today, an exponential number of law firms are productizing and ideating, while law departments (and GC's generally) have become more results driven, increasingly leveraging tremendous amounts of data on matter staffing and outside counsel generally. All good stuff. Toss in new technologies, new competitors, increasing automation and pace of change, opportunities for co-creation, digital revolution, Twitter feeds, innovation conferences and general information overload and it quickly gets interesting.

On the other hand, discussions around the people in our profession and new roles they are playing (and will need to play) are curiously few and far between, although it is clear that NextGEN Legal technology and new processes are disrupting the careers of both attorneys and allied professionals. As a product of our SOLID West Summit in March 2018, The Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group looks to address that gap by bringing together forward-thinking leaders from law firms, corporations, and third-party partners, to identify and prioritize what type of talent will survive and thrive in this disruptive landscape, and what it takes to assume one of these critical evolving and emerging roles.

The skill sets required to succeed in the legal industry have evolved from what they were five years ago and, as such, both firms and legal departments are allocating new responsibilities to existing personnel or creating new positions responsible for this change. Our Working Group is publishing a series of blog posts to highlight the top 7 emerging and evolving roles we have identified that will survive and thrive in the legal innovation economy and share our insights on people doing these jobs now and what it took to get there.

Let’s face it, many of us have been asked to identify problems, co-create, collaborate and develop solutions – often it is the interesting part of any job. Call it lean thinking, continuous improvement, R&D…. call it what you will, but our Working Group members agree that these are the core competencies needed for future success in legal, and are at the heart of these top 7 roles, which center around change, measurement, and actual execution of vision/strategy. As defined by our Working Group - the Top 7 evolving and emerging roles in Legal are:

1. Chief Innovation Officer
2. Director of Legal Operations
3. Legal Solutions Architect
4. Chief Data Architect/Data Scientist
5. Director of Pricing
6. Director of Strategy
7. Director of Practice Group Management

Several of these positions we have defined as “evolving” listed have been around for a few years, but are taking on greater significance and value, while the other “emerging” roles are quite new to Legal. In fact, the first wave of innovation, change and metrics occurred some time ago in the form of pricing (on both sides of the law firm/client relationships), data security and project management, while the more recent growth appears around innovation, practice management, and data management, and is focused on holding someone accountable for change. Since the word intrapreneur will feel dated in 18 months like the Floss (oh yes, I’m hip), our group is focusing on the staying power and impact of such professionals, and recognize titles will sort themselves out.

Positions around what we call innovation and change management require a combination of legal, business, motivational and storytelling skills. At some level, the best attorneys and allied professional leaders have those skills, but we do little to develop or enhance these skills. Our series will show where organizations should focus their efforts when developing these competencies and exercising the intellectual muscles that need the work. We aren’t na?ve, not everyone has a fertile mind for change, but every year there is a new generation that is comfortable with technology, slowly being exposed to new business skill sets (and tech) in law. Moreover, regarding those already with us, don’t discount how many people see the change and want to know what skills will help them succeed in the future.

Change is happening much faster than you think – and forward-thinking organizations recognize that any economic hiccup will put all that we are working toward under a lot of pressure to show returns, and fast.

As you might imagine, there is a lot to talk about. Over the next several weeks, and leading up to SOLID East in New York on September 13th, we will publish articles that will highlight some of these emerging roles and provide details around how to add value and efficiency to our organizations. Our goal is to make sure we all prepare ourselves and the people in our organizations for change and allocating resources to development of skills that will be relevant in the future.

As always, the opinions of this blog are those of the author and not representative of Katten Muchin. Final thank you to Navigant - the sponsor of this Working Group - our work would not be possible without your support of our thought leadership and efforts!

For more information on The Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group or our upcoming Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption (SOLID) on September 13th in New York please visit www.solid.legal

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