4 Key elements to learn Legal Innovation using Legal Design

What is legal innovation

Legal innovation is any improvement in legal services, documents, processes, solutions, and legal thinking that makes the law work better. Legal innovation creates a positive impact on clients, lawyers, and society as a whole. Legal innovation is not limited to technology or generative AI. Innovations in law are iterative improvements that create positive outcomes for people interacting with the law.

Is Legal Innovation the Same as Innovation

Yes, legal innovation is the same as innovation. Legal innovation is the application of innovation in a legal context. Innovation is a step-by-step process of generating and transforming ideas into new or improved services and processes. Innovation turns ideas into practical solutions. Ideas are not innovation. Ideas are thoughts. Turning ideas into action and improvements that work in real life to make them valid and valuable is innovation. 

Legal innovation allows innovators in the legal profession to differentiate and find new markets in the legal system.

Is Legal Innovation the Same as Legal Technology

No, legal innovation is not the same as legal technology. Legal technology is the software and technology that provide legal services and support lawyers in the legal system. Legal tech is innovative because it improves legal services and delivery. Legal tech is one aspect of innovation. 

Legal technology allows lawyers to streamline practice management, document storage, document management, billing, and finance. Generative AI tools improve how lawyers deliver legal services by replacing manual repetitive tasks. Generative AI tools allow lawyers to examine legal documents for consensus and conflicts, perform research, or provide copilot assistance to help lawyers ideate and create new solutions. Embracing AI in law means legal professionals are able to focus on strategic and interesting work. Generative AI removes lawyers from repetitive document creation and updating. The AI tools do the work, and the lawyers check documents to ensure accuracy.

Legal innovation is more holistic than legal tech. Legal technology is only innovative if systems thinking unveils the bigger problems the technology intends to solve. The technology is innovative when it improves the real problem in the system. 

Legal innovation requires a simultaneous focus on different aspects of the legal profession to create true improvement.

For instance, is the more pressing problem the work-life balance of lawyers? Do lawyers have time and space for new innovative thoughts to increase efficiency and client experience? If their desk is flooded with work and the work days are too long, there’s no room for anything else. Let alone the implementation of new efficient technology. Legal tech addresses some work-life challenges for lawyers while the legal profession’s culture remains the same.

Can I use Legal Design for Legal Innovation

Yes, you can use legal design for legal innovation. Legal design is a mindset that applies design thinking to law. Legal design is a human-centric approach to the legal profession that redesigns existing legal systems and processes to be user-friendly and user-centric. Legal design is innovative because it improves outcomes for people interacting with the law by designing legal services from a user rather than a lawyer’s perspective.

What are the 4 Elements of Legal Innovation with Legal Design

The four elements of legal innovation with legal design are time, collaboration, ideas, and ongoing testing. The steps are explained below.

1. Create Space for Legal Innovation

Create space for legal innovation because the number one resource required for legal innovation is time. Designing something new requires time and mental space for creative thinking. Making time for innovation is essential.

Giving people time for thinking requires courage and deliberate change. Lawyers work in an unhealthy work culture and mindset that rewards busyness. 

I’m busy, which means I’m important. 

With this mindset, idle time may seem unproductive, but it’s necessary to make room for innovation. Innovation is challenging because the outcome is unknown. Lawyers fear failure and risk. Lawyers yearn for control. 

Investing sufficient resources and patience while waiting for an outcome is fundamental for legal innovation. Legal teams learn to deliver predictable outcomes and align resources and expectations accordingly. Legal innovation is different in terms of the time it takes and the results it produces. 

Build patience with resources. Innovation appears obvious when you see it. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was so simple you could have thought of it. We have all done it. A regular person somewhere has looked at something plain and mundane with new eyes and created a new and better way to do the same thing.

Humans operate on autopilot. Daily routines are so entrenched people go through the motions with little effort or energy. People pay no attention to the little things. 

Yet lawyers create daily routines and deliver our legal services ourselves. Legal design gives us the tools to redesign routines and legal services. The opportunities are in plain sight. The opportunities are the everyday things lawyers don’t notice. 

Time and a legal design mindset give lawyers ideas about routine things that are ready for improvement. Legal design strengthens lawyers’ ability to listen, observe, and notice little everyday things.

Design challenge. Choose a daily work routine. Write down all the steps and describe them. Look for any opportunity to redesign the steps and improve them. List all the ideas that come to mind. 

Do you have the patience for long-term, sustainable, transformative change?

2. Involve Everyone in Legal Innovation

Involve everyone in legal innovation because legal innovation is not a solo endeavor. Getting clients and colleagues involved in idea generation brings fresh perspectives and insights.  Talk to people over coffee or facilitate a collaborative workshop. A diverse group with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives leads to more creative and innovative ideas.

Invite everyone who interacts with the service or process under innovation. Different people see small improvements and ideas for how to execute them. Involve the people you are serving in the process.

Don’t innovate for customers. Innovate with customers.

Foster a safe, positive atmosphere and culture that encourages open communication and sharing. Create common ground rules to create a safe space for new ideas. 

Focus energy on people willing to participate and let the innovation adoption curve take care of the rest. Slow adopters follow when the time is right.

3. Generating Ideas

Generating ideas is listening to ideas, capturing them, and creating language to describe them to others. 

Mark Stickdorn says in the book This is Service Design Thinking that Creativity is not so much a gift as it is a process of listening to the ideas “flowing” through one’s head and being prepared to articulate them.

Methods for generating new ideas are listed below. 

Spend time with your customers. Innovation and legal design are focused on solving people’s real needs and addressing the challenges they face in accessing legal information or services. Talk to customers and have discussions that go deeper than the typical fact-finding interview. Map the customer journey with you to get the whole picture they are experiencing. Remember that people don’t have legal problems. People have human problems. Start brainstorming when the real problem is apparent. The customer is the focal point. Identify the problems customers face and then start ideating the solution. 

Notice the mundane. The best inventions emerge when someone looks at something ordinary and sees the potential for a better way of doing it. When we operate on autopilot, we ignore details. The most simple solutions are found in the everyday things people fail to notice. Cultivating the ability to slow down, observe, and pay attention is a  powerful strategy to get new ideas. 

Benchmark others. Take inspiration from other industries and adapt the concepts to law. Be open to ideas from unexpected sources. Innovation is contextual. Out-of-date improvements in one industry are disruptive innovations in another. Be curious to learn from others.

Design thinking constrains the problem space and broadens the solution space. Refine the problem as narrowly as possible. What is the problem? Whose problem is it? In which context?

A good challenge for idea generation is describing the problem you are trying to solve but does not stand on the solution itself. That leaves enough room and variety for solution ideas to emerge.

Look at the following examples.

1. What kind of business should I start? 

2. How do we create ways for young entrepreneurs in Boston to get their legal questions answered?

See the difference?

4. Test and keep testing

Test an idea, pilot it, and continue developing the idea until it’s usable, impactful, and profitable. Innovation work continues after a successful pilot. Don’t settle for a good concept and a pilot gone well. Continue building the pilot. 

Successful legal innovation means making an impact at scale. Successful innovation makes an impact at scale and then evolves to profitability. Impact and profitable innovation takes perseverance and patience. 

Making legal innovation sustainable means maintaining a business logic throughout the process. Innovation requires a business model for impact and profit. Innovation creates new business models that allow innovation work to continue.

Can Legal Innovation Get More Clients

Yes, legal innovation can get more clients. Legal innovation and legal design allow lawyers to identify untapped markets. Lawyers are able to use innovation to disrupt the industry, offer new services, open new businesses, and serve different clients. Innovation opens visible and unserved clients and is not difficult using the blue ocean approach.

How to Find Your Blue Ocean and Get More Clients

To find your blue ocean in law means escaping the traditional legal business model. Lawyers are trapped in an outdated business model and compete for the same clients. Blue Ocean says lawyers and legal services are swimming in the red ocean, saturated with identical legal providers.

Competing in the red ocean produces the same outcomes. Make the competition irrelevant by finding a blue ocean of new customers using a new way of serving them. 

Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim write about this in their classic book Blue Ocean Strategy. Following this strategy, lawyers find or create an entirely new market and serve customers nobody is serving. The blue ocean strategy helps redefine competition and encourages new business outside existing competition.

The blue ocean strategy requires businesses to build on strengths, focus on things that lawyers find meaningful, and create the business model that best serves you and your customers. Make the competition irrelevant by finding a niche, the customers, and an innovative way of serving them. Find the unserved clients other law firms have not thought about. 

To find the blue ocean, start with the three shifts in perspective listed below.

1. Look Outside of the Legal Industry

Look outside the legal industry and understand the logic in other sectors. Examine how other industries innovate and serve customers. Ask whether the innovation and service model is relevant to law. 

The shift moves lawyers from competitive thinking to creating a new niche. Worrying about the competition is irrelevant when serving an entirely new market. A market that had not even existed before.

2. Ask the Customers who Reject the Legal Industry

Ask the customers who reject the legal industry why they don’t use the legal industry. Opportunities to identify root problems and barriers emerge. Innovation solves those problems.

Asking for advice from customers who use traditional law firms won’t deliver solid answers. Customers accessing traditional law replicate what exists. Focus on the customers who are not buying legal services. Why don’t they buy legal services? What is their frustration? Identify the changes these potential customers need to buy. The innovation required and the new market are the answers.

The majority of people and businesses do not buy legal services even when they need them. The potential market is enormous. A huge market of customers who don’t use traditional law is untapped. Ask what pain points are ready for innovation and serving. Turn those customer pain points into opportunities. Unserved needs open limitless prospects for building a client base or a new law business.

3. Let go of the Trade-Off Between Value and Cost

Let go of the trade-off between value and cost and separate the value experienced by the customer from the cost of the service. Traditional lawyers believe the cost of legal services is something they can’t influence. The value experienced by the client correlates to the cost of providing the service. In law, this usually means the number of billable hours. Following this logic, providing a valuable service to a customer at a lower cost is impossible.

Traditional industries and companies follow this rationale and are stuck with it. Value and costs are inherently connected. In the legal world, this is the billable hour business model. Increasing value means increasing hours, that is, more cost.

More hours equalling more value is not true. Creating and selling legal products for a fixed price at scale is a powerful way to reach new clients looking for an alternative approach to legal service.Why sell customers time when you are able to sell value? Think about it for a minute. Why would you sell your customers time when you can sell them value? It’s a game-changer.

Can Legal Innovation Close the Justice Gap

Yes, legal innovation can close the justice gap. Justice is inaccessible, people and businesses are excluded from legal help, and statutory rights are unrealized. Access to justice is a significant, fundamental basis for a well-functioning society and is rarely spoken about. And it is a huge opportunity for innovation and serving the market. 

Access to justice from a lawyer’s perspective offers enormous business opportunities. 

Commercial industries view access barriers as opportunities for business development and service provision. The legal profession considers access a marginal issue mentioned in the keynote speeches. Solving the problem is left to active non-profit organizations.

Charity and pro bono work are not the solutions. The solution is new, creative, and innovative lawyers who have a big role to play.

Here is your chance. Find a huge market that no one is serving yet.

It is a big deal

The law affects us daily, but people and businesses don’t use lawyers and courts to solve legal problems. People ask for help from a friend or a relative or try to solve the dispute directly with the other party. People use Google and internet forums. The legal problems are unresolved because people need help representing themselves properly and are unable to access the law. 

Without accessible legal services, economic growth is not inclusive. OECD considers the inability to solve legal problems to be one of the factors perpetuating poverty and slowing down sustainable development. Access to justice gap has also been acknowledged in the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Member States are required to ensure access to justice for all. The world is far away from reaching that goal.

Market potential in numbers

The global World Justice Project obtains comparable data on access to justice worldwide. The World Justice Project publishes the report Global Insights on Access to Justice. The survey was conducted in over 100 countries in 2019 and provides information on how ordinary people worldwide solve their everyday legal problems. The results show that legal problems are very common, with 49% of respondents having experienced a legal problem in the last two years. The legal problems harm people’s lives, and 71% of respondents did not turn to lawyers to solve problems.

Legal innovation is able to reach people who have yet to use the legal profession.

Legal Innovation Examples

The legal innovation examples come from my innovations. In 2015, I figured out how to productize a legal service and serve more clients with value-based pricing. I wanted to make my services more affordable and accessible, and I had done a lot of work with my processes and routines around that.

I was a single mom on maternity leave and needed to serve clients to make a living for myself and my child. There was no time to do anything, or that’s at least how it felt. I was constantly thinking about how to serve more clients with my limited time.

I got the idea when I least expected it. I was on a morning run, and it hit me. 

Why not automate the process to make it more effective and turn it into an online legal service for my clients? That was an aha moment.

Implementing the idea in practice required me to transform the existing contract creation process into a digital process. The technology contained questions and created the contract based on the client’s answers. I added a 30-minute telephone call with me at the end of the service journey, and that was it. 

Six months later, I launched a DIY online service that provided automated shareholder agreements for B2B clients.

The following year, 2016, after getting together with Kaisa Kromhof, the idea pivoted into Contract Mill, now Ment, and a document automation platform serving lawyers worldwide.

The morning run in January 2015 was the turning point. The one idea connected a million little pieces inside my mind, empowered me to meet client needs through innovating existing processes, and allowed me to care for my child without selling hours for money.

How do I Learn Legal Innovation

To learn legal innovation, start noticing what you do routinely and repetitively. Learning legal innovation is a change in mindset that starts with learning legal design. Lawyers use contracts daily, and applying legal design to a contract as part of a Lawyers Design School workshop is a rewarding and tangible way to see how innovation happens. 

Innovation in law starts with small, incremental changes that improve how lawyers work and interact with clients. Legal innovation isn’t legal tech. Legal technology is part of innovation, but only if it solves the root issue. Legal innovation is able to disrupt the legal industry and create new legal businesses serving new customer bases.

Watch the Legal Design IRL episode, which discusses how Ponsilli, an AM Law 100 law firm, uses legal design to innovate and disrupt the healthcare industry to produce outstanding client outcomes.

Innovation in law starts with slowing down, looking at what you do daily, and thinking about improving those routine tasks. Innovation doesn’t mean disrupting the legal profession. Innovation is small improvements that make systems, processes, and outcomes better—lawyers who focus on how to make things better grow a mindset that leads to big change. The key is to get started.