#SmallLaw Lawyers 2.0 - Answering the Call to Evolve

THE CAVEAT: I want to start this article with a caveat: my conclusion is optimistic, but with a caution. Even I, who dedicates every single day to the project which is building an innovative, client-centric and lawyer+team positive environment, can get overwhelmed with all that this asks of us. In a time when lawyer mental health is being discussed much more openly, and when it is acknowledged that our profession has much higher rates of depression and suicide than most others, it is extremely important that the obligation to innovate and #makelawbetter is not seen to create new and unmanageable burdens on us. When I speak to groups about innovation in practice, and get down into the details of the nitty gritty of the application of practice management and technology innovation, I get approached by lawyers who feel so overwhelmed by the enormity of what innovation asks of them, and they feel unable to even start.

I am acutely aware of this, and am concerned that the very discussion of innovation in law is approached as a way out of some of these dark aspects of our profession, not a way to dig a deeper hole of innovation deficit. I want innovation to be seen as the beacon in the darkness for those wondering how to get out of a career choice which is swallowing them, not a further burden which is one too many to bear. I hope that by the end of this discussion, that is what I have presented, and I very enthusiastically welcome a lively discussion on just that point.

WHAT IS #SMALLLAW CALLED TO DO

This is the 3rd of a series of posts where I look at a fairly high level at innovation in law in small firm environments, before I delve more deeply in future posts about specific process or tech innovations. I initially felt that 2.0 was a little to “2000s” for me, but then I realized that 2.0 is exactly what we’re working on here. We’re such a tiny step away from Lawyer 1.0, which has survived for centuries – 2.0 is indeed exactly where we are today, although I hope that we move on from 2.0 far more quickly than we have historically evolved our profession. Also, this post discusses actual delivery of legal services to consumers by lawyers – there are lots of examples of alternative legal service delivery which belong as part of this legal innovation discussion generally, but are beyond the scope of what I’m writing here.

With this post I’m taking a step sideways (at least initially) from #legaltech and #legalinnovation to talk about, well, lawyers. As we approach the 2020s, what is expected of us, how should we frame our role with clients and our expectations of ourselves? Does it matter if you are at the tail end of your career, riding out the last 5-10 years, or just starting out? What about us GenXers, planning on working for another 10-20 years?

I can’t speak to the career-tailers, you will have to decide if you love how you are doing what you are doing enough to ride it out as-is for the last few years of your career. I can speak to what *I* see the expectations for my cohort of lawyers and legal advisors, and how we can grow what we do, and love what we do that much more (and yes, that does include legal tech and innovation!). As for the career-beginners – I think it is both an exciting and a challenging landscape for you, to be starting at the start of what we all hope is finally a real evolution in how legal services are delivered. You have opportunities, but more pressure from alternatives and higher expectations than you probably realized when you entered law school.

We’re told that to excel in practice in the coming years, and to successfully come out the other side of all that the evolution of legal services has in store for us, lawyers need to embrace an additional skill set. The T-shaped lawyer has been discussed, and iterated well by Fernando Garcia in his “plus shaped lawyer” discussion. Further discussion has evolved to the “delta shaped lawyer”.

THE “I” OF LEGAL KNOWLEDGE

The crux of all of these conversations about lawyer competency expectations is that the “I” shape of traditional legal skills and knowledge is what lawyers have traditionally exited law school with, and honed over years of practice. This used to be all which was expected of lawyers, and law school provided a reasonable training ground for those skills, which could then be further developed either independently through study and trial or in a mentor environment of a law firm.

The reality is that “legal knowledge” is no longer ours to hoard. Where previously only dense legal books could be consulted by a brave few, the internet has brought the law to the people – or a least some version of it. We can no longer dole out legal knowledge at a prohibitive hourly rate, secure in our possession of it: from government and court websites, to alternate legal service providers to even lawyers ourselves, legal knowledge is being doled out freely or at extremely reduced fees. Even the language of the law which we developed over centuries to keep non-lawyers out is starting to fall to a push for “plain language” documentation.

There has been much discussion about the ability of artificial intelligence to “replace” lawyers – a fascinating discussion. In a noted experiment in 2017, Case Crunch in England ran a now-famous experiment, having lawyers go head-to-head with AI on a set of legal predictions. Not surprisingly, AI emerged victorious, although a full read of the results shows that even those running the experiment acknowledged that very specific conditions were employed. The most interesting piece which came out of this for me, and a comment which I cite frequently in innovation discussions, is a conclusion by Ian Dodd, one of the judges. He noted that AI may replace some of the grunt work done by junior lawyers and paralegals, but no machine is able to argue in front of a judge. In summary: “the knowledge jobs will go, the wisdom jobs will stay”. I can’t imagine a more succinct statement to guide this discussion, as we look at the growing expectations of lawyers.

For better or worse (and I, fundamentally, fall on the side of “better”) legal knowledge has been democratized and handed over to the people – albeit often in a format which continues to cause confusion and be only a partial answer to the legal problems presented.

This leaves freshly-minted lawyers, armed with legal knowledge and a skill set to further develop that knowledge, standing on the law school steps, horribly unprepared for the fact that they were sold a bill of goods as to the “profession” of law, which has become outdated. It leaves many mid-career lawyers confused by the shifting landscape of the business side of what we do, wondering if they can or want to continue working in this new world. It leaves many at the tail-end of their legal careers, those armed with the Legal Wisdom developed over decades of practice well positioned to ride out the end of the current era of legal practice, but some still embracing practice changes with enthusiasm.

That brings us beyond the “I” to the “T”, “+” and “delta” models. Increasingly, legal innovation is driven by our need to meet these additional expectations of us as professionals:

THE “T”:

[Thanks to Jason Moyse for providing this great introduction to the T shaped lawyer concept]. Essentially, the “T” shaped lawyer is one which builds upon the traditional legal knowledge and expertise with an additional expertise in technology, business, project management, human resources, data security, risk management, politics and more. A given skill set will of course evolve depending upon the practice area and client needs.

If this leaves you, as an “I” shaped lawyer feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, that is understandable! Years and years of costly education, and it suddenly isn’t enough. Some lawyers naturally develop some or all of these skills over years or practice, some even come to practice with skills from a previous work life, or take courses to develop some of the skills. However, how does one fit in adding a good portions of these skills in addition to continuing to develop the “knowledge and skills” we’re billing clients for. Is there financial value in building these skills, at least equivalent to the additional cost and time to develop them? Are clients savvy enough now that they will hire for these skills, assuming that the legal knowledge and expertise is fairly equal across all lawyers?

THE “+”

I’ve heard/ read Fernando Garcia, general counsel at Cargojet, on the addition of yet another skill set which he feels sets a spectacular lawyer apart from a mediocre one: critical interpersonal and empathy skills, valuing diversity and inclusiveness. Do you remember those classes in law school? Do you remember those values being developed in us, alongside with our ability to compete with each other in a cutthroat environment for well-paying Bay Street jobs and moot team positions? No, I don’t either. And yet, I agree completely with Fernando on this point – in our privileged role as the holders of certain legal keys, we need to deliver services to the public in a way which nurtures the relationship with our clients and sees them and treats them, as whole individuals/ businesses, not just a discrete legal problem. This type of relationship can lead to greater collaboration, a broader set of proposed solutions and potential to provide value well beyond that discrete delivery of legal knowledge.

THE DELTA MODEL

Another interesting discussion of these same points is referred to as the Delta Model. [Again, I’m not clear on an attribution here, so feel free to point me towards one!]. A good summary can be found here. This model has “Personal Effectiveness Skills” (entrepreneurial mindset, emotional intelligence, relationship management, communication) on one side of the triangle, “Process, Data and Technology” (technology and social media, business fundamentals, data analytics, project management) on the second side and of course “Legal Knowledge and Skills” on the third side.

This model echoes the “T” and “+” shaped model, again underlying how important the “non-legal” skill sets are becoming.

THE SMALL FIRM REALITY

Let’s get back now to small firm reality. We are being told that to not only survive, but to thrive in the new legal market, we must have a much broader skill set than we leave law school with. In the small firm context, we have to also add an entirely different set of skills: those of business people. To successfully run any small business, owners inevitably wear multiple hats, particularly when starting out.

Those skills include:

-Human resources

-Bookkeeping

-Budget and business plan development

-Marketing and social media

-business development

-office management

-practice management and compliance.

For anyone from Big Law reading this, Small Law doesn’t have departments for all of this – solos literally wear every single one of these hats, particularly at the beginning of practice. Small firms may have grown their teams to include some of these supports as either internal resources or outsourced providers, but that assumes that the professionals have grown enough client base and billings to absorb the additional overhead.

Add to all of these additional pressures, the “T” skills, and how can any solo or small lawyer even find time to practice?

INNOVATION TO THE RESCUE

This is where Small Law can shine as leaders in innovation (see my post “Innovation Alive and Well in Small Law”). Simply put, we can’t possibly expect to meet all of these expectations of practice evolution, if we don’t innovate. The pressures we face in our under-resourced practices mean that we must innovate. I wholeheartedly believe, and live, that this pressure and resulting innovation, leads to a more fulfilling practice: better for both our clients and ourselves as professionals.

So where do we start – how do we as Small Law find a way to integrate the +shaped lawyer practice principles into a functioning and thriving practice which we love? If you have read anything else I have written, it doesn’t surprise you to hear that I believe practice and particularly technology innovation holds the key for us, but that in itself can be daunting and overwhelming. Here are three suggested starting points which have worked for us – and I welcome a lively discussion on this:

Process Mapping:

Definitely one of the innovation terms de jour, it really is a fundamental to creating a better run practice. As professionals, we must deliver consistent, accurate and comprehensive legal solutions. Anything which is stored in any one team member’s head is completely useless to the smooth operation of practice: as many processes as possible must be mapped out in incredible detail. It will almost certainly not be accurate the first time, so live with it a while and refine it. You don’t need fancy tools for this (although there are many available!) – you can white board/ sticky note if that works for you. If you want simple, low cost or free tools, start with Trello, Planner or lists built into practice management tools. Look not only at the steps to completing a particular project, but who does them, how they get approved, what factors intervene to throw the process off course and what the timing is for each step.

3rd party consultants can be extremely helpful in this process, but a lack of resources for those consultants should not hold you back – this can be one of the most rewarding tasks you will undertake in your practice review. Do some reading on the subject and, as a side benefit, in the process you will start building some self-guided (or trained, if you wish) skill sets in project management. It is the *start* of moving outside of our “I” zone of expertise, if you haven’t yet left it.

Process Innovation:

Once you have mapped your processes and refined them over a period of examination, you can take a step back and look at how to make them better. After mapping our processes over a period of time (we initially just used Trello), we moved into creating workflows which we did in Lexicata/ Clio Grow. There are lots of options for ways to do this, but it really is where legal tech (or tech hacked for legal purposes) shines. We took our mapped processes and created detailed workflows with assigned forms, emails and documents to help automate those workflows. It isn’t perfect – I can write full blog posts about my dreams and desires for Clio Grow (and, I may!) but as my software developer husband says, “Perfect is the enemy of done”. And Process innovation is never really “done” in any event – no one workflow has remained untouched from when it was first designed – we adopt a new tool, realize an efficiency or recognize something isn’t working for our team or our clients, and we iterate.

I believe that process innovation is particularly potent as a tool for Small Law – the slightest tweak can have huge impact on our practices in terms of efficiency. In this efficiency, we start to find the gains in time and mental space to look towards developing additional skills.

Neither process mapping nor process innovation need to rely upon complex and expensive technology solutions. For the Small Law lawyer, tools and learning are readily available to get us started down this road and, as they are adopted and mastered, can lead us to the world of the “evolved” legal practice which can make us happier, better lawyers.

Firm Culture & Purpose

Some of the “soft skills” in the “+” and “delta” model noted above ask the legal professional to look beyond both the traditional skill set and the developing technology and business oriented skill sets, and integrate a new set of skills. To me, this has meant discovering and articulating a clear firm culture and purpose at Momentum. This has allowed us to approach our practice, innovation and hiring with a clear agenda. We don’t always get it right, but having a clear purpose helps lift much of the uncertainty as we decide what ideas to pursue.

In hiring, for example, we screen potential hires (legal and non-legal) with a set of initial questions which query issues such as what super heroes would make a good legal team and which traits which make a successful lawyer (extensive knowledge of Game of Thrones being the clear winner there). We are looking for team members who will value our purpose, including empathy for the entrepreneur journey, curiosity and critical thinking. (you are welcome to check out one of the forms here)

We have a Code of Ethics (currently under review for an update!) which we can turn to as we consider changes to our practice.

We have developed a core mandate, which is aspirational as well as guiding: our goal is to “serve the whole entrepreneur”. For us, that means that in our delivery of legal services we seek to provide a service accessible to as many entrepreneurs as possible, with a focus on excellence in our legal and business advice and support. This guides some of the exciting projects which are in development and which I’ll talk about in future posts.

It also means that we seek to provide well rounded advice, placing our legal knowledge and guidance in the context of addressing the full business issue being presented. With entrepreneurs as our client base, this means that, like us, they wear many overlapping hats. This has led to the development of our online client-exclusive group, Momentum Academy, providing business as well as legal tools. It has also led to our decision to trial a co-working space at our Ottawa head office, where we are excited to launch “Momentum Spaces” in October.

I believe that all the different demands to add more expertise to our professional offering can be overwhelming and anxiety provoking. To the point that I started this post with, these additional demands should not further cause despair for lawyers trying to find their way in this new landscape, they should instead be our key to a more rewarding and fulfilling practice. I feel that, in defining our culture and purpose, we can create a roadmap for ourselves – one which we will undoubtedly redraw numerous times, but to which we can return when uncertainty grips us.

DON’T BE LONELY:

Of all my thoughts here, I feel that this is the most important: you aren’t in this alone. There are so many places and people to you can turn to for support. There are online groups discussing everything in this space, many of which are disproportionately populated by solo/ smalls. There are conferences and “unconferences” – I just spent an amazing 3 days off in the woods with other business leaders and legal innovators, dressed in sweats and sitting by campfires – discussing legal innovation with all the pressures of the outside world removed from us in the wifi/ cell free zone. There are consultants for those who need professional guidance and mentors who have been working at this for years already.

If you are reading this and are currently practicing in a traditional law firm environment, but are eager to get out and build a practice which will fulfill you and serve your clients better, but don’t know where to start, there are an increasing number of innovative firms to join (including Momentum Business Law). Seek them out, ask questions, look for mentors. If there is one thing which lawyers know how to do well, it is talk!

CONCLUSIONS:

I started out this post saying that I hoped I would paint a picture of Lawyer 2.0 which was invigorating and motivational, not overwhelming. The reality is that legal practice is changing, and Small Law will feel the effects first and more acutely than Big Law will.

I like to think of us innovative Small Law lawyers as the electric vehicles of our profession: the internal combustion engine of traditional law has been around for centuries, largely unchanged. It has been increasingly recognized as polluting and bad for society, yet innovation has been slow and wide adoption seems far in the future still. Yet, some bold visionaries drove development of a new way of practicing forward, pushing the boundaries of what is known and accepted. More and more innovators have seen that this is the way of the future, and have joined the cause, providing alternatives. Adoption is still slow on the consumer side, but as infrastructure is built to support these new styles of practice, adoption will grow.

Have you driven a Tesla? If you have, the Holy Shit moment when you realize how fast it accelerates is exactly what we feel as we innovate at Momentum Business Law: the future is ours, we’re on the right side of history and leaving the old ways behind. It is amazing how quickly you forget about needing gas stations.