I don't know about you, but finding my creativity, energy, and focus to do truly innovative work in the onset of the COVID pandemic crisis has been hard. Really hard. When I finally had an idea surface unbidden this past week, I got so excited: Has the shift finally happened? Am I moving out of triage mode and into more creative work? 🤞
It's my great hope that as we emerge from the trenches of #keeplawopen to think about both medium- and longer-term #makelawbetter needs and goals in the law, we'll find high levels of anxiety are leveling off and we're able to focus on doing the highly-creative work that transformative innovation requires.
And, to make sure you have resources at the ready as you emerge, let me commend the following to you for innovation inspiration:
Law Is a Buyer's Market: Building a Client-First Law Firm
Jordan Furlong (@jordan_law21) is making his book Law Is a Buyer's Market: Building a Client-First Law Firm available at no cost via PDF download on his website. It's also available right now for $2.99 for the Kindle version. Go right now and download Jordan's book. Now is the time to build the law firm that will serve both you and the world we now live in. Jordan's book will help you do this. And please don't forget to give him a shout-out on the Twitter to acknowledge his generosity.
Future Framework for Legal Practice
Legal innovator Quddus Pourshafie of Future Lab Legal is creating the Future Framework for Legal Practice. Quddus describes it as "a new way to think about the business and process of the law and legal services. It allows lawyers and law firms to build a future facing practice though fundamentally changing the way they think about their work as it is exponentially increased by leveraging technology. It creates a pathway to the future of law, with implications not only for the Legal Industry but also the way in which other industries who benefit from the Law interact with our industry." The Framework provides a modern approach to building (or rebuilding) a legal practice during and post-COVID, and most certainly one demanded by the 21st Century.
I'll be sharing more resources to support you along your innovation journey here on the #makelawbetter dot org news blog, along with real-world experiments unfolding as I write and that we all can learn from. At some point, the crisis pressure will start to ease and it's my hope we will all find a renewed sense of energy, creativity, and purpose to get to work in our little corners of the world to #makelawbetter. Let's do what we can, where we are, with what we have. And then, do a little (or a lot!) more.
And, if you're still in triage mode and the creativity has yet to strike? Continue to give yourself some grace. #makelawbetter opportunities will still be here when you're ready.