https://aiohealthpro.com/58r1ovxab Covid-19 spread around the world, sending billions of people into lockdown and social distancing as health services and the economy have struggled to cope. The pandemic has hit and reshaped companies, industries, and national economies. Across Western society economic inequality has widened, living standards have declined, and the American Dream has continued to free-fall.
Get Cheap Xanax Online Traditional in-house legal service delivery and business models – already under pressure to meet the increased demands of their corporate clients following the 2008 global financial crisis – have been radically disrupted.
We are living through a period of transition and economic uncertainty, knowing that things are changing around us but not sure exactly what the world is going to look like when we come out of the immediate consequences of the multiple crises created by the 2020 global pandemic.[1]
Strong leadership is required. The leadership skillset for long-term success requires leaders and their organizations to be strategic, agile, innovative and purposeful “in their approach, thinking about implications for a broad range of stakeholders and society at large”.[2]
https://merangue.com/1ubn67i2 There is certainly plenty of corporate introspection currently underway. Many organisations have already realised that agility is essential and that those who can adapt and evolve will be better placed to emerge from a crisis.
– Megan Motto, CEO, Governance Institute of Australia[3]
Buying Xanax Amsterdam Developing and leading an organization that can respond to a rapidly changing and often ambiguous environment is a primary challenge for leaders.[4] And as organizations and the legal profession responds to the pandemic and changing marketplace – building more innovative, digital, sustainable, and client-centric business models – so too must Chief Legal Officers, General Counsel and their in-house leadership teams.
For the legal profession, an unsustainable value proposition, new competitive forces (i.e. a combination of competitive alternative legal service providers, the expanding reach of technology, and the changing behaviour of the corporate consumer of legal services), and the current crisis threaten the traditional legal organization’s future landscape.
https://solomedicalsupply.com/2024/08/07/mjtw6hrpk No longer solely charged with ensuring their organizations are complying with the law, in-house legal teams are now in the unique position of balancing their independent role, legal service delivery, organizational risk and corporate objectives. As a result, Chief Legal Officers and/or General Counsel (hereinafter referred to as “General Counsel”) are striving to add short and long-term value as both legal, business, strategic and ethical advisors.[5]
The COVID-19 challenge is unprecedented, both for the economy and for aspects of the legal system. Law-firm leaders must prepare for a wide range of scenarios, the likelihood of which will depend on the effectiveness of both public-health- and economic-policy interventions.
– McKinsey[6]
https://inteligencialimite.org/2024/08/07/ke5uy1fji Ultimately, the General Counsel’s role as an agile “partner” to the CEO must be balanced with their role as a “guardian” to the company. This is an important and delicate balance[7] that requires legal leaders that “know how to develop and lead an adaptable organization”.[8] Responsible executive leadership, strong support for the General Counsel and legal team, and an embedded culture of values and integrity are integral to an organization’s success today, and a critical item on every Board of Director’s agenda.[9] Organizations in which appropriate organizational values are aligned with strategy, reinforced, and strongly held and understood – particularly in an environment of uncertainty and little precedent – have a competitive advantage. Why? Because personnel from the senior leaders to the front line are “able to align quickly on what the right course of action should be”.[10]
https://eloquentgushing.com/tul2mk7thu Governments, corporations, and their in-house legal departments will have to “make choices where there are no good answers, just less bad answers, to questions we all hoped to never have to ask”.[11] The goal must be a commitment to inclusive economic growth (in which there is widespread access to opportunity),[12] keeping a nation and a company’s people healthy while also protecting its economic health.[13] Although there are no definitive answers or policies, strong leadership and organizational culture must support the decisions.
https://oevenezolano.org/2024/08/2qb68bi However, one thing is clear, the crisis is accelerating a process of deglobalization and digitization that was already under way. As the short-term risks diminish, so the medium to long-term future looks more uncertain.[14] The post-pandemic economic order will likely be driven by geopolitics, moving from a world of trade rules to one of economic nationalism and geo-economic rivalry.[15]
https://homeupgradespecialist.com/g59yi7rvm7v The Great Recession landed a powerful blow to law firms, forcing layoffs and closures in an industry long thought immune to business cycles, but the spreading downturn caused by the coronavirus brings vast uncertainty about the economic outlook for lawyers.
– Marilyn Odendahl[16]
Overview
Traditional legal departments are moving into a new digital age and their outdated business models and organizational structure will need to be modernized, and in many cases, reinvented.[17] If today’s legal organizations fail to innovate their business and legal service delivery model and stake their claim in the evolving legal industry, they risk a limited opportunity to not just survive, but thrive.[18]
https://solomedicalsupply.com/2024/08/07/b3s479yz The majority of organizations still do not have a ‘mature’ legal department, according to a new study by the Association of Corporate Counsel.
– 2020 ACC Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report[19]
https://transculturalexchange.org/c4dgcz8yyw In the end, despite the writing on the wall, it will likely be largely due to client demands – fueled by their needs and expectations – that will drive change in many legal departments to modernize their legal service delivery and business models. Why? The corporate segment of the legal marketplace is a buyer’s market, and the trend will not be reversed, particularly for a corporation’s own General Counsel and in-house legal department.[20] As legal problems are increasingly viewed as business challenges raising legal issues, corporate clients are progressively insisting that legal service be provided in ways that are more tailored to their precise needs and at a cost that bears a more reasonable relationship to the value provided.[21] Clients are demanding that legal services be delivered “faster, better, and cheaper” and within a format of “instant and ongoing connectivity”.[22] This, along with the fact that the world has turned to digitization, ultimately forces in-house legal departments to do so as well:[23]
https://foster2forever.com/2024/08/ygfhngclma1.html “When dealing with the coronavirus, policy discussions have focused mostly on either weathering the short-term crisis or investing in the long-term recovery. However, the hardest problems that COVID-19 brings in the coming months will occur in the space between the two. …
Xanax Bars Online This process will swing between peaks and valleys, with steps backward and forward, taking several years. Welcome to the climb: an extended period of ascents and descents before starting a recovery. … The biggest risks during the climb will vary for each business. Large companies with problematically high debt levels will be more vulnerable. New debt on balance sheets will also make it harder to borrow and will dent credit ratings. That will slow investment and hiring. Those impacts will ripple through supply chains.
Buy Xanax Vietnam For small and medium-sized businesses, the threat is lower profits. Less money means less rehiring and, in relative terms, more expensive fixed costs. …
This will not stop the forces of creative destruction. E-commerce … [c]onsumers and markets are adapting fast. Some of these changes won’t be reversed when this is over. This will hit sectors such as commercial real estate [and] services … especially hard, deepening their pain.
These forces show that the biggest danger in the climb is that balance sheets decay to the point of closure or default.”
https://www.clawscustomboxes.com/h5x0sbj At this very moment, in the face of the 2020 Global Pandemic aftermaths and a dawning global recession (possibly followed by a depression later this decade),[24] most corporate clients will become much more cost averse and price-sensitive – and open to solutions and legal service providers capable of catering to their need for efficient cost effective multi-disciplinary legal services. The General Counsel’s legal team must not only provide legal advice and services, but also be a business advisor who is at ease with technology and collaboration. This may turn out to be a clear advantage for more agile and efficient – and thus more digital, collaborative – legal departments; even if they do not have the same reputation and brand value as established or traditional law firms and players.[25]
As well, much of the world has moved to virtual collaboration models during the global pandemic. Legal departments who have already invested in the required capabilities, technologies and ecosystems, are positioned to use this window of opportunity to outpace their organization’s more traditional competitors[26]:[27]
Legal Order Xanax Online Canada “As these firms are facing the current COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath, we are now observing an even more significant acceleration towards virtual delivery and digital business models. Managing this transformation is the key challenge for leaders and managers today.”
https://udaan.org/kealmq3ynr8.php The biggest challenge, however, is probably going to be the true commitment to change within professional services firms themselves and their willingness to replace existing ways of doing business with new approaches.
– Connie Brenton and Sebastian Hartmann[28]
Buy Xanax Medication Online General Counsel and in-house counsel stand at a pivotal point in the history of the legal industry. They must continue their evolution from traditional, reactive lawyers to a strategic business unit composed of top legal talent and strategic, process-savvy operators who “embrace innovations in technology, new service delivery models, and increased operational efficiencies”.[29] And corporate legal departments will increasingly be tasked to reduce external legal costs and operate more efficiently internally than ever before.[30] As a result, many legal departments are hiring legal operations professionals to help manage the in-house legal department, and oversee and ensure in-house and external legal services are provided more effectively and with better financial discipline:[31]
https://www.psicologialaboral.net/2024/08/07/4i0qnn4s “In a mature legal department there is a culture of innovation driving continuous improvement of processes and systems. … In a mature legal department, legal services are cost-effectively and efficiently delivered by virtue of optimization of how people, processes and technology are deployed, which is informed by good data and metrics. …
Buying Xanax Online [O]ne of the defining characteristics of a mature legal department is one in which in-house lawyers are free from repetitive, low value work and able to focus on providing sophisticated legal advice in a manner that is aligned with the organization. Legal operations includes the use of technology and automation which helps to achieve this goal.”
https://www.clawscustomboxes.com/8w9huun7i6s [F]inding ways to streamline, eliminate, systematize and/or automate routine legal work is of paramount importance. … New legal service delivery models are needed that provide streamlined approaches and data analytics to enable lawyers to provide increasingly cost-effective, sophisticated and strategic support to business.
– New Business World, New Legal Models[32]
Within this paradigm shift, sophisticated General Counsel conceptualize service delivery in terms of end-to-end solutions. This means the optimal combination of people (lawyer or non-lawyer), process, and technology, and hybrid inside/outside sourcing models, to meet their organization’s business challenges that raise or include legal issues. Within this new paradigm, General Counsel will be looking for innovative cost models for these end-to-end solutions, which produce the right balance of efficiency, quality, flexibility, and predictability.[33]
The key to mastering the journey is strong leadership, an agile and innovative corporate culture, client-centricity, multi-disciplinary teams, and digital business models. Designing for the emerging future of next-generation legal service delivery requires a new mindset and new management tools[34] – and agile organizations use methods like design or emergent thinking and other exploratory techniques to get there. The legal profession will need every ounce of talent and strategic energy to not only rebuild our society, but reinvent our role within it. If terrible challenges can expose weaknesses and self-inflicted wounds within the legal profession and legal services delivery,[35] they can also clarify the path forward. Imagining the rebirth of the legal profession is easier than realizing it. Inertia is a stubborn antagonist. Resource constraints will be even more severe after the pandemic, and the bandwidth of many legal organizations even more constricted. But it is also difficult – during this once-in-a-generation public-health, economic, and political calamity—to recall another moment when the call for leadership, innovation, meaningful change, and service[36] to our clients and to society was more important.
Buy Alprazolam Bulk The reasons for legal departments being unable to advance in maturity include a lack of resources …. However … in many cases there is a lack of interest or competing interest from the general counsel. A lot of this is about culture, which is the hardest kind of change.
– Corporate Counsel[37]
https://homeupgradespecialist.com/z2j0izn Legal organizations must “rethink how they lead and manage and think through their strategic positioning – none of which is aligned with the status quo”.[38] However, in order to do so, a concern that must be identified and addressed is the conservative elements of the legal profession that may – whether through fear, ignorance, self-interest, or tradition – continue to undermine the requisite innovation required at this junction in time: “just because current circumstances provide reason to think that something ought to be the case hardly means that it will be done”.[39] Unfortunately, the legal industry has been historically resistant to change and slow to adapt[40] to the important advance to a “tech-enabled, process and data-driven, multi-disciplinary global industry”.[41] As such, it is not a given that all the oldest or largest companies will outlive the effects of the crisis – adaptability is key as business models and organizational cultures are tested:[42]
“These are big ideas for business leaders to ponder at a time when most are desperately trying to keep their heads above the flood or, at best, concentrating on the practicalities of how to restart after lockdown. …
https://eloquentgushing.com/hi66uvfs Those who were on a path toward deep change will find ways to use the forces now at play to carry on, and even expand. Those who weren’t, won’t. …
Ordering Xanax Online The pressure of this crisis is already flattening decision-making hierarchies [and for the best organizations, evolving a commitment to organizational learning and shared decision-making]. Progress out of the pandemic will be founded on technology that reinforces the human community by encouraging rapid cross-company collaboration.”
https://solomedicalsupply.com/2024/08/07/s31duzypb3v COVID-19 has created a new, broader urgency for business to go digital, and the legal function will not receive a hall pass. Law’s incumbent delivery models, entrenched stakeholders, risk-aversion, and adherence to precedent and resistance to innovation are no match for the pandemic. The Coronavirus has caused the legal establishment to utilize latent technologies, work remotely, engage in online learning, and adopt new methods of operation, delivery, collaboration, and social interaction.
– Forbes[43]
Cheaper Alternative To Xanax In this environment, the most essential capabilities an enterprise legal service provider must have is (a) strong leadership, (b) a clear sense of purpose, vision and strategy, (c) strong, technological and innovation-oriented capability, (d) a collaborative multidisciplinary culture, and (d) the ability to see legal problems for what they are—business problems. This is no easy task. COVID-19 has exposed a truth that many General Counsel already knew:[44]
- The legal risks that large corporations face today are often complex and multifaceted.
- Solutions to these problems require more than just legal advice. They require an understanding of supply chains, ecosystems, regulatory regimes, technology, privacy, cybersecurity, tax systems, talent management strategies, operational models, etc.
Order Xanax Online Uk Today’s ideal legal leader and in-house legal department must have deep legal expertise. However, just as important, they must also be able to resolve legal risks by designing and implementing multidisciplinary solutions. This requires leaders with the humility to listen to outside voices and varied information sources and capabilities across a broad range of expertise and professional services including – but not limited to – legal, management consulting, operations, financial transactions, technology and innovation, people advisory, tax, change management, and strategy[45] formulation, implementation and evaluation, etc. The “only way to avoid ‘groupthink’ and blind spots is to ensure representatives with diverse backgrounds and expertise are at the table when major decisions are made”.[46]
Ensuring that a legal organization both represents and is inclusive of a wide array of backgrounds, viewpoints, and beliefs is a business imperative; yet, legal organizations struggle to translate big-picture concepts like diversity and inclusion into practical steps and actionable plans.
– American Bar Association[47]
Online Xanax Uk Clients are looking for and expecting from their legal organizations “greater efficiency, price predictability, and cost-effectiveness in the legal services they contract for and receive”. A sustainable “value proposition” in the new normal requires a new business model that incorporates and delivers effective legal service delivery (utilizing technology, process, lawyers working at the “top of their license”,[48] and alternative staffing models: the right person – lawyer or otherwise – for the right task), practice excellence, and customer service. In short: the right resources, doing the right work, in the most cost effective and efficient manner – not your typical legal organization.[49]
https://nedediciones.com/uncategorized/tur0g94w Only a few organizations in the world currently have this capability. The key for General Counsel and legal departments to reap a cost-effective transformational benefit is to change the way they work – and organizations with strong leadership and corporate culture “seem to be discovering agile on the fly” during this pandemic crisis:[50]
Get Cheap Xanax Online “Executives tell us that the innovations their companies are creating weren’t part of a strategic plan. They weren’t built into anybody’s compensation system. They weren’t led by senior leaders or by a program office, and they didn’t go through the usual stage-gate process. Typically, a small group of people spotted an urgent need, dropped lower-priority activities, broke typical bureaucratic procedures, and transformed from everyday workers to real-life corporate MacGyvers, surprising themselves and their bosses in the process. Sounds a lot like agile to us. …
Take note, though: This spur-of-the-moment agility is fragile. Innovations happen sporadically rather than systematically. And when the emergency fades, people typically return to traditional command-and-control innovation until the next crisis arises, when they must reinvent agile approaches all over again. So how can companies maintain their agility once the crisis is over?”
Xanax Order Online Legal In a time of crisis, the necessary executive focus is suddenly there. Smart companies seize this opportunity to rethink their innovation infrastructure. … Don’t waste those experiences by planning for how to get back to the old normal. Plan for a new normal.
– Harvard Business Review[51]
https://www.psicologialaboral.net/2024/08/07/5zv9vyyhc Successful organizations need leaders who can lead and act and people who trust each other. Unfortunately many organizations are not agile, rather reflecting a “gotcha culture” that undermines trust to the point “where people are afraid to do anything without assurances that they won’t get in trouble for breaking a standard that was set years ago that’s no longer relevant to the realities of today”.[52]
To be successful, General Counsel need to collaborate and modernize their business and legal service delivery model, ensuring the legal department and its leadership team is interconnected and aligned with the goals of the business. They also need a legal operations partner capable of working vertically across other corporate functions to align the operations of the law department with the strategy of the broader organization. An appropriate business and legal service delivery model “must be supported by new capabilities, processes, and most importantly organizational structure.” A successful “business model and corporate culture will require working with an ecosystem of legal and non-legal partners to create best-in-class offerings, and take advantage of technology developments that make it more efficient and less expensive”.[53]
Leadership. If you want the title and the power but not the responsibility, you’ll fail.
– Forbes[54]
In recent years, in-house legal departments have scaled significantly, with some corporations maintaining legal departments the size of large law firms (although on average legal departments have 17 lawyers, with two-thirds of legal departments having 5 or fewer lawyers).[55] Across this continuum, General Counsel are all looking “to achieve greater efficiency and productivity within their departments and to work more strategically; bringing in” Legal Department Operations “professionals to concentrate on business operations” (i.e. designing, managing, improving)[56] such that General Counsel and their leadership teams are able to focus on fostering a “culture” of collaboration and innovation,[57] and being more agile, proactive and strategic in how they advise the business – from the simple to the complex to the chaotic:[58]
- Simple contexts are characterized by stability and clear cause-and-effect relationships that are easily discernible by everyone. Often, the right answer is self-evident and undisputed. In this realm of “known knowns,” decisions are unquestioned because all parties share an understanding. Areas that are little subject to change, such as increasing volume of routine and repetitive legal work (i.e. that may be streamlined, eliminated, systematized and/or automated), usually belong here. (Note: due to change management issues, this particular example may move into the ‘complicated context’ for many traditional legal departments and leadership teams resistant to change and innovation, and legal operations managers may be the designated ‘change agents’).
- Complicated contexts, unlike simple ones, may contain multiple right answers, and though there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, not everyone can see it. This is the realm of “known unknowns.” This approach is not easy and often requires expertise.
- In a complicated context, at least one right answer exists. In a complex context, however, right answers can’t be ferreted out. This is the realm of “unknown unknowns,” and it is the domain to which much of contemporary business has shifted. In this domain, we can understand why things happen only in retrospect. Instructive patterns, however, can emerge if the leader conducts experiments that are safe to fail. Leaders who don’t recognize that a complex domain requires a more experimental mode of management may become impatient when they don’t seem to be achieving the results they were aiming for.
- In a chaotic context, searching for right answers may be pointless: The relationships between cause and effect are generally considered to be impossible to determine because they shift constantly and no manageable patterns exist—only turbulence. This is the realm of unknowables. The events of September 11, 2001, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic fall into this category. In the chaotic domain, a leader’s immediate job is not to discover patterns but to stanch the bleeding. A leader must first act to establish order, then sense where stability is present and from where it is absent, and then respond by working to transform the situation from chaos to complexity, where the identification of emerging patterns can both help prevent future crises and discern new opportunities.
The complicated and chaotic domains of decision making are the best places for collaboration and innovation.
In line with other C-suite level officers, legal leaders who repeatedly fall short in the expected high standards of leadership and financial stewardship put themselves and their organizations in peril of a steep fall.
In the complex environment of the current business world … [a] deep understanding of context, the ability to embrace complexity and paradox, and a willingness to flexibly change leadership style will be required for leaders who want to make things happen in a time of increasing uncertainty.
– Harvard Business Review[59]
https://mandikaye.com/blog/kh0vkwe General Counsel & In-House Legal Departments
Even prior to the 2020 pandemic the “threat of an economic winter” was present. For the legal profession the memory of the 2008 global financial crisis and recession marked the end of the “golden age of legal services” with increasing pressure from corporate and retail clients to deliver faster, better, cost effective and client-centric legal services.
The legal service delivery model has been slowly evolving over the last decade from a reactive, inefficient, expensive, single-channel practice to a more client-centric, efficient, collaborative, multi-provider paradigm. Mobile, social, networked computing has changed the way companies and people work – we are now extraordinarily connected – enabling a broad range of non-traditional, innovative, and well lead legal service providers to connect with clients efficiently in real time, whether around the corner or on the other side of the world.[60] Today we may now be living in what may be described as “a fully digital economy. In just two months, we have seen almost every sector of our economy become more digitalized”.[61]
And, most traditional legal organizations are not prepared for the technological and economic reality of today’s rapidly changing legal market, having failed over the last decade to proactively innovate and adopt efficient processes, technology, and – most importantly – a competitive business and legal services delivery model to meet the changing demands of business.
In the face of the 2020 pandemic crisis, this is no longer a “nice to have” but rather an essential part of the modern General Counsel’s strategic plan and toolkit.
Agility, fluidity, the ability to collaborate, and cultural awareness will become key lawyer attributes, because the legal function will be more closely aligned with the businesses, individuals, and society it serves.
– Mark Cohen[62]
Unfortunately, for traditional legal organizations and their leadership teams, this is now a significant issue because there is now a significant gap between the identified and escalating trends and their actual readiness and ability to address them.
Like other C-suite executives and legal leaders, General Counsel and their legal teams are facing increasingly urgent and intensifying challenges as a result of the pandemic. It is widely known that most General Counsel are under pressure to modernize the departments they lead. While there are no safe harbours and simple answers, greater agility and more innovative and strategic thinking is needed as legal leaders confront the central challenge of where their organization (and legal services) fit within this emerging new world and how it must change in order to successfully occupy that role:[63]
“The disruption caused by the global pandemic of 2020 will have far-reaching, long-term and structural impact across the legal industry. Yet, amid the changes to come, there will also be continuity, and even acceleration, in the ongoing transformation of the legal profession.
Before the crisis, the legal sector was already undergoing transformation driven by economic, demographic, regulatory, technology and competitive demands. Those forces will continue to influence the industry, with some forces further amplified and fortified as a result of the crisis.
Given the new financial pressures on businesses created by the crisis, there will be a brighter spotlight on legal professionals’ performance moving ahead. Corporate counsel and law firms alike will need to increase productivity and efficiency [and work processes], while also ensuring they deliver the highest value and [return on investment].
The importance of client satisfaction … will further intensify as … clients … look to spend less and do more in-house.
The ability to use technology to optimize performance will be more important than ever. …
The pandemic perhaps will set a foundation for ‘must have’ technologies to keep a legal business operational. But as the legal industry moves forward, the focus will be on the capabilities that can help an organization thrive in the new legal landscape.
Are legal professionals ready to meet the demands ahead?”
The status quo is unsustainable. Success will depend on an openness to change and capacity to adapt. Leveraging the tools and resources available is characteristic of high-performing businesses and professionals around the world. The same is true for the legal sector. The legal services model going forward “will require a dramatic re-thinking” to ensure it is supported by appropriate capabilities, processes and organizational structures, and is “client-centric, collaborative, data driven, tech-enabled, multidisciplinary, diverse, agile, constantly improving, scaled, capitalized, and digitally transformed”.[64]
The success of the legal profession will be dependent upon its ability and willingness to see and embrace the challenges and opportunities afforded by new and emerging tools, resources, and methods of working. Above all, it will depend on the profession’s mindset(s) and capacity to evolve and adapt. This will entail looking at key aspects of the business – leadership and strategy, business and legal service delivery model, client experience, organization design, operations, pricing, talent development and learning, purpose and meaning, etc. The problem is that most traditional legal organizations and lawyers do not have the mindset, strategic focus, adaptability or agility needed to undertake and embrace transformational innovation. And the legal profession must come to grips with ‘deficient skillsets and outdated mindsets’.
As an industry, we don’t train lawyers on how to manage modest changes to operating protocol in the best of times, so we do have some lingering reservations that lawyers are adequately equipped with right tools and the right mindset to innovate in the wake of a global crisis.
– Legal Industry Survey: Navigating a Path Forward[65]
The accelerating trends – capped by the challenges and risks of the 2020 pandemic – demand new mindsets, strategies, and skillsets. To innovate, General Counsel and their legal teams will have to be able to change their frame of mind. Doing business in the same old way is now a recipe for failure. Just “like any career today, the law profession must adapt to” this “ever-changing world. Because of this, experienced lawyers as well as those just completing law school must be open to new ways of thinking and learning new skills”, in short, to reframe and adopt future-ready mindsets – from a strategic mindset, to a growth mindset (that encompasses lifelong learning), to a client-centric mindset, an innovative and process-conscious mindset, and a technology and digital-friendly mindset – in order to be positioned to support a strong sustainable legal organization and business[66]:[67]
“The legal service delivery model is shifting from a reactive, inefficient, single-channel routine to a dynamic, client-centric, multi-provider opportunity. Mobile, social, networked computing has changed the way companies and people work, enabling [innovative] legal service providers to connect and communicate with legal consumers and collaborate with partners around the globe in real time. Greater connectivity means legal consumers will have greater access to legal service providers from literally all over the world.”
The volume of work most law departments manage has increased significantly. On a day-to-day basis in-house counsel must ensure their businesses are compliant with a wide range of existing regulations across an equally wide range of developed and developing markets. Additionally, they must also manage sweeping regulatory changes, such as those currently happening in the tax Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) and Interbank Offered Rates (IBOR) areas that impact the businesses they serve across multiple fronts.[68]
At a larger level, General Counsel must also guide the companies they serve through a period of heightened and rapidly increasing risk that impacts their organization, corporate ecosystems and supply chains, acquisition strategies, and almost everything their company does and aspires to do. Complicating matters further is an additional portfolio of tasks General Counsel must manage. Today’s General Counsel and leadership teams are being asked to think like business leaders, not just lawyers.[69]
The role of the in-house lawyer has evolved dramatically in the past 10 years, shifting from a “siloed” legal division (providing legal advice – broadly defined – and managing regulatory and litigation risk) to one where the General Counsel of sophisticated corporations have a seat at the executive leadership table and is integral to the business over and above just providing legal advice: incorporating governance and risk, enhancing economic value for the business (with strategic and business advice), and driving the need for their legal departments, traditional law firms and other legal service providers to adapt.[70] As noted in the Harvard Business Review: “The General Counsel is now a core member of the top management team and offers advice not just on law and related matters but helps shape discussion and debate around business issues”.[71] Possibly the “greatest challenge for General Counsel and other inside lawyers is to reconcile the dual – and at times contradictory – roles of being both a partner to the business leaders and a guardian of the corporation’s integrity and reputation”.[72]
The skill set for today’s General Counsel include the ability to place legal issues in a larger business context, embrace risk and make decisions, communicate with business partners in language they can relate to, and work seamlessly with the executive team and the Board of Directors to make productive decisions about operations and strategy, which has become increasingly global in scope. General Counsel must perform a delicate balancing act between being trusted and active members of the management team (i.e., having a “seat at the table”) and maintaining their independence[73]:[74]
“To serve in this role, future GCs will need to possess the managerial courage to say ‘no’, even when it is unpopular. To do this effectively, they will need to have excellent communication skills and emotional intelligence to ensure they are constructive in their assessment of risk and rewards in a business context.”
Be forward-thinking; prepare for the worst today and be ready in the future. Embrace change and think differently!
– John Harrity[75]
Leadership is important to competing successfully in today’s hyper-competitive environment, and the ‘right leadership’ is recognized as critical for organizations to thrive (if not just survive) in the 21st century. Unfortunately, leadership for many organizations today is seen as their “weakest link”,[76] and there is a heightened concern for organizations across the world about the quality of their internal leadership and whether they are adequately prepared for the future.[77]
This recognition – that leadership matters – and the ongoing escalation in the pace of change, uncertainty and unpredictability has increased the demand for effective leaders. As such, legal leaders who can successfully lead integrated multi-disciplinary teams and networks, manage change, and reshape their organizations are a respected and sought after commodity.[78]
The skill set for today’s General Counsel include the ability to understand the fundamentals of strategic management, place legal issues in a larger business context, embrace risk and make decisions, innovate and manage change, communicate with business partners in language they can relate to, and work seamlessly with the executive team and the Board of Directors to make productive decisions about operations and strategy, which has become increasingly global in scope. General Counsel must perform a delicate balancing act between being trusted and active members of the management team (i.e., having a “seat at the table”) and maintaining their independence:[79]
“To serve in this role, [General Counsel and their leadership teams] need to possess the managerial courage to say “no,” even when it is unpopular. To do this effectively, they … need to have excellent communication skills and emotional intelligence to ensure they are constructive in their assessment of risk and rewards in a business context.”
Senior legal leaders need to identify and respond to ‘tomorrow’s challenges today’, to be pro-active as much as possible in a rapidly changing environment, and to make judgment calls and build consensus in ambiguous and even unprecedented situations.
– The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership[80]
In this environment, successful General Counsel and their in-house legal departments must reflect a strategic and ethical business unit composed of top legal talent and strategic, process-savvy operators who “embrace innovations in technology, new service delivery models, and increased operational efficiencies”.[81] Legal leaders who fall short in strategic implementation and financial stewardship put themselves in peril. As such, there are many good reasons for General Counsel and their legal departments to adopt appropriate corporate business and leadership practices, including the skillset of a structured strategic management approach that embraces strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation, and recognizes the value of emergent – entrepreneurial – thinking[82].[83]
General Counsel and their leadership teams must be “bold, innovative”, agile, “and willing to adapt” – re-examining their business and delivery models, re-evaluating their leadership teams and skillsets, and envisioning a legal department that is not “business as usual”.[84] Big picture, strategic management (including change management)[85] will need to be a skillset understood and utilized by legal leaders to position their departments to implement the following:[86]
- A shared vision[87] for the legal department.
- A clearly defined business strategy[88] – ensure their legal department has a clearly defined business strategy that is compelling, credible, and conveys a competitive advantage.[89] This strategy must be articulated, internally and externally, with passion and energy. For most traditional legal departments this will likely require a two-pronged strategy: (a) change the traditional business and operating model and invest in and leverage enabling technology; and (b) reposition to adapt to the challenges of new technologies, processes, alternative legal service providers, and increased utilization of legal services.
- A business model that supports the business strategy – adopt the right governance structure, see that it operates with integrity at all levels throughout the organization and ensure that the right behaviour is measured and rewarded.
- Investment in business systems that support the business model – ensure that every investment decision is well-informed, evidence-based and supports the legal department’s business model.
- An organizational culture[90] – create a powerful message of unity and purpose, put corporate culture and shared values at the heart of everything the legal department does, and empower everyone to do the right thing in any given situation (i.e. support experimentation / exploration / innovation). Leadership plays a significant role in the development of their legal department’s reputation, brand and tone of voice to make sure it aligns with long term sustainable success, and the type of lawyers (employees) it wishes to attract.
- Alignment of legal leaders, managers, and lawyers with the business strategy (emphasizing accountability) Cheap Alprazolam – to be successful, leadership must build a legal department that is simultaneously purpose-driven, performance-focused (i.e. Key Performance Indicators),[91] and principles-led.[92] Buy Alprazolam From Canada Each lawyer and employee must understand their role in support of the strategy, be empowered to do what is right, and provided the management information to enable them to measure and monitor their own performance. Everyone must be held accountable to the long term strategy and annual goals. Particularly important, the overall employee compensation program must be aligned to ensure the “right behaviours are rewarded and that bad behaviours are discouraged”. Change management and leadership resistance to change are the biggest barriers to implementing change in corporate legal departments.
Senior legal leaders are responsible for weighing the organization’s strategy, execution capabilities and potential risks, and thinking not just about their personal success but about the organization’s overall performance.
– The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership[93]
Drilling down, General Counsel and legal leaders that want to flourish in the world ahead must be able to adapt and successfully implement the strategy and required change management within their organizations. All of the above is required to ultimately be able to implement a successful new business and legal service delivery model:[94]
- Changing the way traditional legal departments approach client service is at the heart of the matter. The traditional legal department’s “lawyer only” business model is too narrow, inadequately client-focused, and too expensive. Any new business model should be based on client-centered considerations (‘what is at stake?’ and ‘what are the client’s objectives?’), and the identification of the optimalway to achieve the client’s objectives, in light of the stakes involved. While maintaining the traditional commitment to quality, outcomes, and ethics, the new business model should be equally determined to achieve these objectives using the optimal set of resources (maximize efficiency) and proceeding in the most cost-effective way (minimize costs). The right resources (lawyer or otherwise), doing the right work, in the most cost effective and efficient manner.
- To enable an optimized new business model, legal departments will need to:
- diversify their resource and internal leadership/management model to include a different mix of people, more technology and more collaboration and transparency with non-lawyers.
- move to a financial model which is based on the value of the services provided (i.e. “outputs”), which incentivizes processes and norms that manage costs to their optimal level, and which manages revenue in a way that generates a sustainable level of profit. (Note: avoid “inputs” such as the billable hour[95] which incentivizes inefficiency and unnecessary cost, and obscures the true financial elements of a legal department’s operations).
- embrace the need to continually innovate in the way they deliver legal services by adopting a model of annual investment in research and development for the future (i.e. leverage new business models, technologies, processes, and resources).
Sophisticated General Counsel today – and most if not all General Counsel over the next 10 years – conceptualise legal service delivery in terms of end-to-end business solutions. This means the optimal combination of people (lawyer or non-lawyer), process, and technology, and hybrid inside/outside multidisciplinary sourcing models, to meet their organization’s business challenges that include legal issues. Within this new paradigm, General Counsel will be looking for innovative cost models for these end-to-end solutions, which produce the right balance of efficiency, quality, flexibility, and predictability.
[F]aced with pressure to do more with less and a heightened attention on resource optimization – the right resources, doing the right work, in the most cost effective and efficient manner – General Counsel and their legal operations team will increasingly be utilizing cost-effective alternative legal service providers, alternative staffing models, and evolving technologies.
– The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model[96]
To accomplish this, they have launched a wide range of initiatives focused on increasing efficiency and cost cutting:[97]
- They have been negotiating lower rates with their external law firms, as well as shifting legal spend to alternative legal service providers.
- Many legal departments are hiring legal operations professionals to help manage the in-house legal department, and oversee and ensure external legal services are being provided more effectively and with better financial discipline. With a vision to provide a “seamless legal ecosystem that delivers corporate legal support to small, medium and large businesses with peak efficiency,” Legal Department Operations professionals have become highly visible symbols of the new legal service delivery model for the corporate client.
- And they accord business professionals (business executives and managers), technologists (IT engineers, law technologists, law data scientists), process experts (design thinkers), and others essential to the competitive delivery of legal services for their corporate client “commensurate status and rewards”.
- They have also been hiring new lawyers to bring work previously done by outside counsel in-house. More (and more sophisticated) legal work is being addressed in-house, “is being automated” (technology is the legal profession’s best friend), “or is being eliminated by accepting more risk” (i.e. create practical self-help resources, chatbots, contract templates, contract fallbacks and annotations; train business clients; utilizing competitively priced alternative legal service providers for rote, repetitive, and low-risk work; leverage legal operation managers and paralegals as first line of support). Leading in-house legal teams are proactively identifying and re-engineering their legal work to avoid or reduce “low-impact, repetitive, routine and low-risk” legal work (i.e. ‘de-lawyer’) in order to address and concentrate on “high-impact and high-value” legal work.
- General counsel have also been managing the adoption of new technologies and new delivery models, provided by a wide range of alternative service providers, to help increase the efficiency of their departments.
The industry will accelerate its gradual transformation to a multidisciplinary, integrated, platform-driven, capitalized, data-based, problem-solving, customer-centric marketplace. A handful of elite providers have made that transition at scale and can expect explosive growth from customers in need of safe hands … to complex business challenges that include legal risk.
– COVID-19 and the Reformation of Legal Culture, Forbes[98]
The end goal of this work is not just to reduce cost. It is also to transform law departments into proactive business partners capable of helping their organizations grow more quickly and become more resilient to external shocks like the ones we are experiencing today (prioritizing high-value tasks aligned with strengths and goals, cutting tasks that do not add value, automating process-oriented tasks, outsourcing low value tasks that cannot be cut, etc.):[99]
“Creative lawyers, who can reach across practice areas, geographies and cultures … who can give sound general counsel need to be backed by new technologies, multi-disciplinary, diverse and inclusive teams, with global reach and emotionally intelligent skill-sets …
The transition … to the Next New Normal is going to be a difficult time for lawyers, but what is next is a better age for lawyers but not the same as it was – it is about building the tools to transition to what is needed next. … A time of building new tools for a new future.”
The events of the past several weeks and the wide-ranging impacts the COVID-19 outbreak are having on businesses underline the important role general counsel play inside their organizations. General Counsel and their in-house legal departments will thrive if they continually revisit their business and delivery model, set a coherent vision, and place culture at the top of the priority list . A strong vision will go south very quickly if leadership does not implement a bold business model and legal leadership structure, and thoughtfully create the appropriate culture and actively manage that culture every day.
Buy Xanax Medication Online Remote Work and Office Real Estate – a significant impact of the 2020 Pandemic
An immediate issue facing General Counsel and their in-house legal departments – in addition to the well-being of employees, efficiently handling client work, and ethical considerations – now and in the future may well be remote work and its consequent impact on one of the legal profession’s biggest fixed costs, office real estate: “The ability to be fully remote. I am seeing that big firms are moving slowly — too slowly. Many big firms operate the same way they did 50 years ago, being paper-heavy and offering limited options to work from home. Those firms now have had to immediately manage having thousands of people work from home, not just attorneys but also all support team members, and it’s a disaster. If they are still paper-driven, they are really scrambling and need people physically in the office to handle files — and giving hard thought about how to keep the law firm running with remote-working mandates”.[100] Others have been “amazed” by how well their legal teams have fared without a physical office space, “despite the copious paperwork and regular face-to-face conversations usually required at a law firm” and legal departments.[101]
The legal industry has a mixed history when it comes to embracing technology,[102] but looking outside the legal industry, as a result of the 2020 pandemic, millions of office workers in sectors and industries across the world have brought remote working to maturity almost overnight. And “as productivity holds steady and real estate savings beckon”, a growing list of companies – including Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Shopify, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, etc. – have indicated that the “hegemony of the office” may be over as a far bigger share of their personnel will continue to work remotely “even after the public health crisis has passed”.[103]
Many of these organizations are looking at significantly reducing their real estate footprint, and their reliance upon office space and mandatory attendance as an operational model – and it could transform traditional business models:[104]
“The bottom line is that the pandemic has forced companies to make crisis decisions, and forced a lot of executives to see that remote working was a viable choice.
Now that business leaders can see the potential to rely significantly on workers who don’t come into the office every day, it forces executives to rethink a lot of other things about their operations. …
[T]he change in the technology platforms in the last four to five years has been very significant in terms of creating enabling technologies … [w]hat’s been missing is … senior-executive buy in.”
As a result of the 2020 pandemic, the legal profession and in-house legal departments — tradition-bound and labour-heavy — may be inadvertently on the cusp of a transformation in which legal technology and artificial-intelligence platforms will dramatically affect their legal service delivery model and how legal work gets done. Possibly becoming ‘digital by default’ as a result of the pandemic, a reduction in office legal space (and its consequent fixed cost)[105] should assist General Counsel and their leadership teams to implement meaningful change to not only the cost of legal services but the legal service delivery model itself.
Even before coronavirus struck, the reign of the office had started to look a little shaky. A combination of rising rents, the digital revolution and increased demands for flexible working meant its population was slowly emigrating to different milieu.
– The Economist[106]
However, it should be borne in mind that since the 2008 global financial crisis only a relatively small percentage of legal organizations have been proactively innovating and adapting their business and legal service delivery models to meet the changing demands of business – and others have only been taking steps in a reactionary way, similar to what is occurring now.[107] General Counsel and in-house legal departments unable to see this crisis as a ‘wake-up call’ to make substantive long-term changes are in danger of falling even further behind as “the economic shock of COVID-19 has led to a significant business slowdown”.[108] Unfortunately there continues to be resistance to change, with traditional legal organizations and leaders[109] unable to see or accept such innovation – likely to the detriment of their legal department and corporate organization itself. It is unlikely that CEO’s of organizations with large legal departments will be accepting of General Counsel unable to modernize their culture or legal service delivery model.
As noted by the ABA Journal, “the telecommuting debate” should be “over. The value of remote working conditions is being proved, and law firms” and legal departments “—especially the large ones—will be almost as productive during these challenging times as they were before and will be after”. The 2020 pandemic has caused the legal establishment generally to utilize digital technologies and work remotely, adopting new methods of collaboration, operation and legal service delivery.[110] Strong legal leaders have “a newfound acceptance and respect for working remotely”,[111] and measuring this knowledge against the demands of corporate clients, pressure from competitors, and the cost of traditional legal services, brick-and-mortar offices and lost time during long commutes” should “be the new debate. As noted by one legal commentator, “the legal industry has embarked on its digital journey and there is no turning back”.[112]
However, in this environment, one key message for the legal profession is that technology – while extremely important as “part of the solution” – cannot be seen as “the solution”, or as a shortcut to recapture years of competitive gaps as against the best in class. Legal technology should be seen and recognized as a tool (albeit an important tool) to boost the implementation of an appropriate, competitive, and well-designed business and operating model for a legal organization’s ‘new normal’.[113]
Jes Staley, the chief executive of Barclays, the British bank, said that ‘the notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past’. … James Gorman, the Morgan Stanley chief executive … told Bloomberg that the company had ‘proven we can operate with no footprint. That tells you an enormous amount about where people need to be physically’.
– New York Times[114]
Xanax Buy In Uk Conclusion
The global pandemic of 2020 will likely be considered a seminal event generations from now in light of its global impact in respect to deaths (exceeding all military conflicts of the past 70 years), social disruption, employment and the economy. The current pandemic may be the worst global calamity most legal leaders have seen, but it is hardly unique over the last two decades (i.e. 2008 global financial crisis, 2001 9/11 terror attacks, natural and technological disasters).[115] In these uncertain times the future will not likely be all that different, continuing to present companies with a series of unexpected challenges and opportunities, and the status quo of ‘business as usual’ will no longer be sufficient. An agile business model supported by strong leadership and organizational culture can help in-house legal departments create and support the innovations they will need to not only survive, but to thrive.[116]
So how can law firms remain competitive? By not going back to the standard law firm model, i.e., everyone works in the office. Instead, law firms need to keep their employees working remotely, thereby shedding overhead. There are pros and cons to attorneys working remotely. However, the past couple of months have shown overall that attorneys and law firm employees can successfully work remotely.
– Law Firm Competition: The Landscape Has Changed[117]
It is likely not surprising that over the next few years legal organizations will likely operate with smaller offices, less staff and better technology. Organizations like the Association of Corporate Counsel and Corporate Legal Operations Consortium continue to “have an increasingly loud drum beat for efficiency and innovation”, and “its members work in some of the largest companies in the world”. Corporate – and a growing segment of retail – clients expect legal organizations to come with a pre-packaged suite of services that include technology, process, and partnering with multidisciplinary professionals (including alternative legal service providers). If they do not, sophisticated corporate clients will find appropriate legal service providers – and that includes General Counsel and their legal departments – that can and will.[118]
Considering all the ways in which innovation and legal technology infrastructure is shaping the practice of law – making lawyers more nimble, more efficient, and more secure – the successful legal departments will be the ones that are positioned with a vision, strategy, culture, and appropriate business and legal services delivery model to invest in and leverage the most advanced capabilities available. This will make the ‘forward looking’ General Counsel and legal leaders more competitive and less likely to be left behind, well positioned to leverage and accelerate forward.[119]
The legal profession is in a period of major change, and globally the legal industry is poised for even more significant transformation. Once insulated, law has become one of the most competitive markets in the new normal. As the legal services delivery model and legal market evolves nationally and across the globe there are significant implications for how lawyers and legal organizations will need to adapt.
The key to establishing a viable, competitive, and relevant legal organization is innovation and leadership – not just the development and adoption of technology-driven platforms and service delivery models, although they are critical, but through new ideas about how legal departments and their business models are structured.
A legal department business model, “to be successful”, will require working with an ecosystem of legal and non-legal partners to create best-in-class offerings, and take advantage of technology developments that will make it more efficient and less expensive to meet corporate client expectations – which in turn will increase demand for those legal services. Such a model must be supported by strong leadership and willingness to innovate and adopt new capabilities, processes, and most importantly organizational structures and legal service delivery models.
To safeguard their position in this new reality, traditional General Counsel and their legal departments will need to rethink key elements of their leadership, management, culture, and business model, and capture the advantages presented by legal technology and new legal service delivery models. Demand for sophisticated legal services will not simply evaporate, but less sophisticated more traditional General Counsel and their legal teams will struggle in light of evolving corporate client expectations, while their more enlightened competitors take advantage of the vacuum.
Eric Sigurdson
https://oevenezolano.org/2024/08/ihwii2yf0 Endnotes:
[1] Joseph Andrew, The Next New Normal is a Bronze Age for Law, LinkedIn, May 1, 2020. Also see, Denton’s Joe Andrew: This is the bronze age for lawyers, The Lawyer, April 6, 2020.
[2] Megan Motto, Path out of the pandemic – a note from our CEO, Governance Institute Of Australia, June 1, 2020. Also see, Rick Wartzman and Kelly Tang, The Surprising Way Companies Can Shore Up Their Financial Strength, Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2020.
[3] Megan Motto, Path out of the pandemic – a note from our CEO, Governance Institute Of Australia, June 1, 2020.
[4] David Wilkinson, New Research Briefing: How to Develop and Lead an Adaptable Organization, Oxford Review Briefings. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[5] Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017; Spotlight on General Counsel, Deloitte.com, 2015.
[6] Todd Babbitz, Albert Bollard, etal, COVID-19: Implications for Law Firms, McKinsey & Company (mckinsey.com), May 4, 2020.
[7] How the Role of General Counsel is Evolving Corporate Governance, Boardroom Resources, 2016; Ben Heineman Jr., The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension, 2016; Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017.
[8] David Wilkinson, New Research Briefing: How to Develop and Lead an Adaptable Organization, Oxford Review Briefings. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[9] Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017. Also see: Camille Jovanovic and Steve Chan, Is Corporate Culture on Your Agenda?, Institute of Corporate Directors, May 8, 2017; Harvard Business Review, The ‘Business in Society’ Imperatives for CEOs, Global Advisors, December 20, 2016; Jorg Thierfelder, The Role of the General Counsel with the Board of Directors, Egon Zehnder.com, 2017; 2014 Global Risk Survey, Deloitte; Cindy Fornelli, Protecting that ‘Priceless Asset’ – Your Company’s Reputation, LinkedIn, January 3, 2017; Kim Harrison, Why a good corporate reputation is important to your organization, Cutting Edge PR.com; Robert Eccles, Scott Newquist, and Roland Schatz, Reputation and its Risks, Harvard Business Review, February 2007.
[10] Laura Garnett, 8 HR Leaders Share the Crucial Management Insights They’ve Learned During COVID, Forbes, May 26, 2020; Tracy Brower, How To Sustain and Strengthen Company Culture Through the Coronavirus Pandemic, May 25, 2020; Michael Mankins, The Defining Elements of a Winning Culture, Harvard Business Review, December 19, 2013; Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2018. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Corporate Leadership and Culture: United Airlines & the ‘Re-accomodated’ Doctor – guiding principles for Boards, C-suite executives, and General Counsel, Sigurdson Post, May 2, 2017.
[11] Joseph Andrew, The Next New Normal is a Bronze Age for Law, LinkedIn, May 1, 2020. Also see, Denton’s Joe Andrew: This is the bronze age for lawyers, The Lawyer, April 6, 2020.
[12] Marguerite Ward, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon joins Ray Dalio, Mark Cuban, and other billionaires sounding the alarm on inequality in the US, Business Insider, May 19, 2020; Jamie Dimon, An Update on JPMorgan Chase’s Response to COVID-19, JPMorgan Chase & Co (news.jpmorganchase.com), May 19, 2020.
[13] Eric Levitz, Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression, New York Magazine, May 22, 2020.
[14] Andrew Hill, What coronavirus tells company boards about the next crisis, Financial Times, May 26, 2020.
[15] Campbell Clark, Take this warning: the postpandemic economic order will be driven by geopolitics, Globe and Mail, May 3, 2020; Joe Altonji, Mike Short, Mark Medice and Yvonne Nath, The Legal Profession in a “Post COVID” World – Part 1, Law Vision, April 21, 2020.
[16] Marilyn Odendahl, Pandemic creates more uncertainty than usual in legal profession, The Indiana Lawyer, April 29, 2020.
[17] BDO Law Firm Leadership Series 2017, New Law Firm Structures and Models, BDO, September 2017.
[18] Ken Grady, My Thoughts On 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Market, The Algorithmic Society, January 11, 2018. See, 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Industry, The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute (hereinafter referred to as ‘The 2018 Georgetown Report’).
[19] Lucy Saddleton, Association of Corporate Counsel study finds most legal departments are not ‘mature’, Canadian Lawyer, April 30, 2020. Also see, 2020 ACC Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report, ACC & Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020; Dan Clark, Legal Operations Professionals Lead to More Mature Legal Department, Corporate Counsel (law.com), April 28, 2020.
[20] Mark Cohen, Legal Buyers Taking Charge: ‘The GC Thought Leaders Experiment’ and Beyond, Forbes, July 17, 2017; Mark Cohen and Liam Brown, New Players driving value for legal departments, CBA National, October 2, 2017’ Jordan Furlong, Law is a Buyer’s Market: Building a Client-First Law Firm, Law Twenty-one, 2017.
[21] Ralph Baxter, A Framework for Success: The 21st Century Law Firm Business Model, Legal Executive Institute.com, November 24, 2015.
[22] Amanda Griffin, Corporate Consumers Turn to Alternative Providers, JD Journal.com, November 21, 2017.
[23] Mike Moffatt and John McNally, We aren’t restarting the economy. We’re climbing a mountain, Globe and Mail, May 24, 2020.
[24] See for example: Eric Levitz, Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression, New York Magazine, May 22, 2020; Nouriel Roubini, The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s, Project Syndicate, April 28, 2020; Nouriel Roubini, Here are the biggest economic challenges we face over the next 10 years, World Economic Forum, May 1, 2020; Nouriel Roubini, Ten reasons why a ‘Greater Depression’ for the 2020s is inevitable, The Guardian, April 29, 2020; Nouriel Roubini, The coming Greater Depression of the 2020s, MarketWatch, April 28, 2020; A. Gary Shilling, Stock Traders Should Heed the Lessons of the 1930s, Bloomberg Opinion, April 30, 2020.
[25] Connie Brenton and Sebastian Hartmann, The Invisible Threat to “Traditional” Law Firms, Consultants and other Professional Services Firms, LinkedIn, April 28, 2020 [Also see article in Medium.com dated May 4, 2020]; Joe Altonji, Mike Short, Mark Medice and Yvonne Nath, The Legal Profession in a “Post COVID” World – Part 3: The Changing Nature of the Firm, Law Vision, April 28, 2020.
[26] Connie Brenton and Sebastian Hartmann, The Invisible Threat to “Traditional” Law Firms, Consultants and other Professional Services Firms, LinkedIn, April 28, 2020 [Also see article in Medium.com dated May 4, 2020].
[27] Sebastian Hartmann and Stephan Kaufmann, Designing for Client-Centricity: A Lens for Legal, Consulting, Accounting and Technology Services Firms, LinkedIn, May 19, 2020.
[28] Connie Brenton and Sebastian Hartmann, The Invisible Threat to “Traditional” Law Firms, Consultants and other Professional Services Firms, LinkedIn, April 28, 2020 [Also see article in Medium.com dated May 4, 2020].
[29] Deloitte, The legal department of the future: How disruptive trends are creating a new business model for in-house legal, Deloitte Development, 2017. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017.
[30] Deloitte, The legal department of the future: How disruptive trends are creating a new business model for in-house legal, Deloitte Development, 2017. See, Gabrielle Orum Hernandez, UnitedLex to Support Bulk of DXC Technology’s In-House Department, The American Lawyer, December 8, 2017 (“the move marks the largest process outsourcing deal over a five-year period in history”).
[31] Lucy Saddleton, Association of Corporate Counsel study finds most legal departments are not ‘mature’, Canadian Lawyer, April 30, 2020. Also see, 2020 ACC Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report, ACC & Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020; Dan Clark, Legal Operations Professionals Lead to More Mature Legal Department, Corporate Counsel (law.com), April 28, 2020.
[32] Susan Wortzman, Matthew Peters, and Judith McKay, New Business World, New Legal Models, McCarthy Tetrault, May 9, 2019.
[33] Steven Walker, Six things modern GCs really want from their law firms, LinkedIn, November 27, 2017 (republished: Remaking Law Firms.com, December 7, 2017; and Ross Intelligence.com, January 5, 2018).
[34] Mark Cohen, The FT Innovative Lawyers – Global Legal Hackathon: Meeting the Challenge of Law in the Digital Age, Forbes, May 26, 2020; Alessandro Di Fiore, Planning Doesn’t Have to the Be the Enemy of Agile, Harvard Business Review, September 13, 2018. Also see, Peter Ginter, W. Jack Duncan, and Linda Swayne, Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations (8th edition), John Wiley & Sons, 2018; Sebastian Fixson and Jay Rao, Learning Emergent Strategies through Design Thinking, Design Management Review, Vol. 25, Issue 1, Spring 2014; Antonio Dottore and David Corkindale, Towards a Theory of Business Model Adaptation, Regional Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 2009: 6th International Australian Graduate School Entrepreneurship Research Exchange, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, 2009; Walter Brenner and Falk Uebernickel, Design Thinking for Innovation: Research and Practice, Springer International Publishing, 2016; Marko Matalamaki, Effectuation, an emerging theory of entrepreneurship – towards a mature stage of the development, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 24, Issue 4, 2017; Steven Pattinson, Strategic Thinking: intelligent opportunism and emergent strategy – the case of Strategic Engineering Services, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Volume 7, No. 1, 2016; Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[35] See for example, Lyle Moran, Law Firms are seeing major slowdown in business because of COVID-19, data shows, ABA Journal, May 4, 2020; Augusta Ventures, When the music stops: a review of law firm balance sheets, Lexology, May 4, 2020; Michael Cross, 55% of leading firms do not have a month’s cash in the bank, The Law Society Gazette (lawgazette.co.uk), May 4, 2020; Pay Cuts, Layoffs, and More: How Law Firms Are Managing the Pandemic, The American Lawyer (law.com), May 4, 2020; Marilyn Odendahl, Pandemic creates more uncertainty than usual in legal profession, The Indiana Lawyer, April 29, 2020; Clio’s COVID-19 Impact Research Briefing: May 4, Clio.com, May 2020; Kibkabe Araya, The General Counsel Hired Before the COVID-19 Pandemic: March 2020 In-House Moves, March 31, 2020; Brian Baxter, Top Lawyers’ Pay Cut as Coronavirus Brings C-Suite Austerity, Bloomberg Law, March 30, 2020; Fiona Lam, Singapore law firms tighten purse strings, adapt to changes in demand, The Business Times, May 6, 2020;
[36] See generally the following re ‘service’: William Burns, America Needs a Rebirth of Public Service, The Atlantic, May 4, 2020.
[37] Dan Clark, Legal Operations Professionals Lead to More Mature Legal Department, Corporate Counsel (law.com), April 28, 2020. Also see, 2020 ACC Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report, ACC & Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020; Lucy Saddleton, Association of Corporate Counsel study finds most legal departments are not ‘mature’, Canadian Lawyer, April 30, 2020.
[38] Joe Altonji, Mike Short, Mark Medice and Yvonne Nath, The Legal Profession in a “Post COVID” World – Part 4: Preparing the Firm to Survive and Thrive Through Future Disruptions, Law Vision, May 1, 2020.
[39] Yascha Mounk, Prepare for the Roaring Twenties, The Atlantic, May 21, 2020; Eric Sigurdson, Future-Ready Mindsets to Succeed in the New Legal Economy – an introduction for lawyers and legal leaders, Sigurdson Post, January 31, 2020.
[40] Eric Sigurdson, Future-Ready Mindsets to Succeed in the New Legal Economy – an introduction for lawyers and legal leaders, Sigurdson Post, January 31, 2020.
[41] Mark Cohen, What’s A Lawyer Now? Law’s Shift From Practice to Skill, Forbes, September 23, 2019.
[42] Andrew Hill, Why some companies will survive this crisis and others will die, Financial Times, May 11, 2020.
[43] Mark Cohen, The FT Innovative Lawyers – Global Legal Hackathon: Meeting the Challenge of Law in the Digital Age, Forbes, May 26, 2020.
[44] Cornelius Grossmann and Nicholas Bruch, EY Outlines its Strategy in Legal and Approach to Servicing Law Departments: EY’s goal is to become an enterprise legal service provider to law departments, blending tech, law and consulting to serve client’s needs, The American Lawyer (law.com), May 1, 2020.
[45] Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[46] Amanda Taub, Why Are Women-Led Nations Doing Better With COVID-19?: A new leadership style offers promise for a new era of global threats, New York Times, May 15, 2020.
[47] Emilie Ninan and Virginia Essandoh, 10 Characteristics of Inclusive Leadership, American Bar Association: Business Law Section (businesslawtoday.org), April 20, 2020.
[48] Mark Cohen, What’s A Lawyer Now? Law’s Shift From Practice to Skill, Forbes, September 23, 2019; Susan Hackett and Karl Chapman, The Higher Use of Lawyers in a Data and Tech Enabled World, Corporate Counsel, September 18, 2019.
[49] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers & In-House Counsel: Five New Year’s Resolutions – Leadership, Operations, Metrics, Technology, and External Counsel, Sigurdson Post, December 13, 2016.
[50] Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez, Develop Agility that Outlasts the Pandemic, Harvard Business Review, May 15, 2020.
[51] Linus Dahlander and Martin Wallin, Why Now is the Time for ‘Open Innovation’, Harvard Business Review, June 5, 2020.
[52] Glenn Llopis, A Leadership Pandemic Was Spreading Before COVID-19, Forbes, April 21, 2020.
[53] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Anndam Bhattacharya, Martin Reeves, Nilolaus Lang, Rajah Augustinraj, New Business Models for a New Global Landscape, BCG Henderson Institute, November 14, 2017.
[54] Terina Allen, This is the Most Important Question Leaders Ask During a Crisis, Forbes, May 6, 2020.
[55] 2019 Global Legal Department Benchmarking Report, Association of Corporate Counsel and Major Lindsey & Africa, June 2019; 2016 Legal Department In-Sourcing and Efficiency Report: The Keys to a More Effective Legal Department, Thomson Reuters, 2016; 2019 State of the Industry Survey: Results and Analysis, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), 2019; 2019 HBR Law Department Survey, HBR Consulting, 2019 (citing 3.4 lawyers per billion in an organization’s revenue). Also see, Susan Wortzman, Matthew Peters, and Judith McKay, New Business World, New Legal Models, McCarthy Tetrault, May 9, 2019; Gary Sasso, The Corporate Legal Department of Today and Tomorrow, Carlton Fields, February 2019.
[56] Operations Manager role addresses operations process (design, planning, control, performance improvement) and strategy, and may include: Strategic planning; Optimized workflow; Knowledge management; Optimized contract management; Performance management; Training and development; Firm and Vendor management; Financial and budget management; Outside counsel management; Project management; Litigation support; Technology support; Data and legal analytics (operational analytics and business intelligence); Professional capability and resource management; Cross-departmental and cross-functional alignment. See generally, Sterling Miller, Ten Things: Legal Operations – What In-house Lawyers Need to Know, SterlingMiller2014.wordpress.com, April 17, 2019.
[57] 2018 State of Corporate Law Departments: Innovation, Data and Collaboration Drive Optimal Results, Thomson Reuters, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), 2018.
[58] David Snowden and Mary Boone, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, November 2007.
[59] David Snowden and Mary Boone, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, November 2007.
[60] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Joshua Lenon and Bryce Tarling, The Next Phase of Legal Technology Has Already Been Built, Above the Law, December 7, 2017.
[61] Adam Felesky, Open banking would help the recovery, Financial Post, June 5, 2020.
[62] Mark Cohen, After-Corona Legal Careers: More Choice and Less Practice, Forbes, May 14, 2020.
[63] The 2020 Future Ready Lawyer Survey: Performance Drivers, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020.
[64] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guild for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Mark Cohen, Are Law Firms Sustainable? It’s the Model That Matters, Forbes, August 19, 2019.
[65] Nancy Rapoport, Catherine Krow, and Stephanie Corey, Legal Industry Survey: Navigating a Path Forward, Legal Decoder (legaldecoder.com), June 4, 2020.
[66] Eric Sigurdson, Future-Ready Mindsets to Succeed in the New Legal Economy – an introduction for lawyers and legal leaders, Sigurdson Post, January 31, 2020.
[67] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018. Also see, Jordan Furlong, 9 Emerging Truths about Legal Service Delivery, CBA.org, Spring 2016; Stuart Barr, What will the law firms of the future look like?, HighQ.com, November 9, 2016; Shari Davidson, Confessions of a Legal Recruiter: Law is change, are you still relevant?, Above the Law, December 6, 2017.
[68] Cornelius Grossmann and Nicholas Bruch, EY Outlines its Strategy in Legal and Approach to Servicing Law Departments: EY’s goal is to become an enterprise legal service provider to law departments, blending tech, law and consulting to serve client’s needs, The American Lawyer (law.com), May 1, 2020.
[69] Cornelius Grossmann and Nicholas Bruch, EY Outlines its Strategy in Legal and Approach to Servicing Law Departments: EY’s goal is to become an enterprise legal service provider to law departments, blending tech, law and consulting to serve client’s needs, The American Lawyer (law.com), May 1, 2020.
[70] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Deloitte, The legal department of the future: How disruptive trends are creating a new business model for in-house legal, Deloitte Development, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017.
[71] Ben Heineman, Jr, The Rise of the General Counsel, Harvard Business Review, September 27, 2012; John Amer, The General Counsel as senior leader: more than “just a lawyer”, Korn Ferry, 2015. Also see, David Wilkins, The In-House Counsel Movement: Metrics of Change, The Practice. Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School, May-June 2016;
[72] Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017; Ben W. Heineman, Jr., The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension, 2016; Survey: The Rise of the GC Report 2016: From Legal Adviser to Strategic Adviser, NYSE Governance Services / BarkerGilmore Survey Report, www.nyse.com.
[73] Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017.
[74] eBook: Skills for the 21st Century General Counsel, Association of Corporate Counsel, 2013.
[75] Vivian Hood, Demonstrating firm leadership in a pandemic, Jaffe (jaffepr.com), April 2, 2020 [reprinted May 6, 2020, Baker Tilly (bakertilly.ca)].
[76] George Manning and Kent Curtis, The Art of Leadership (5th edition), McGraw-Hill Education, 2015.
[77] Global Leadership Forecast 2018: 25 Research Insights to Fuel Your People Strategy, EY.com / Development Dimensions International (DDI) / Conference Board Inc, 2018 (“the top challenges vying for leaders’ action focused on their own leaders. Developing ‘Next Gen’ leaders and failure to attract/retain top talent were rated in the top five by 64 percent and 60 percent of respondents”); Jean Brittain Leslie, The Leadership Gap: What You Need, and Still Don’t Have, When It Comes to Leadership Talent, Center for Creative Leadership, 2015; Amy Fox, Great Leaders Connect with Employees, Foster Collaboration and Embrace continuous Change, Entrepreneur.com, April 19, 2016; Laci Loew, Study Shows Leadership Development Rated Below Average or Poor in More than One-Third of Organizations, Training Magazine (trainingmag.com), May 28, 2015; Chris Groscurth, Future-Ready Leadership: Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Praeger, 2018; From C-Suite to Digital Suite: How to Lead Through Digital Transformation, Right Management Manpower Group, 2017.
[78] Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018.
[79] Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017; eBook: Skills for the 21st Century General Counsel, Association of Corporate Counsel, 2013.
[80] Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018.
[81] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018; Deloitte, The legal department of the future: How disruptive trends are creating a new business model for in-house legal, Deloitte Development, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel and In-House Legal as Corporate Conscience: an evolutionary crossroads in the age of disruption, Sigurdson Post, June 29, 2017.
[82] Emergent thinking (or ‘intelligent opportunism’) is the idea that, although strategic thinking is inherently concerned with shaping and reshaping strategic intent, there must be room for flexibility – an integration of both strategic and entrepreneurial thinking (both based on the theory of ‘effectuation’) – thus allowing leadership and organizations to consider new opportunities. Emergent thinking is about entrepreneurial leadership, adopting a flexible approach to strategy in order to take advantage of emerging strategies and new opportunities (that may be arguably more relevant in a rapidly changing business environment) and, by being ‘intelligently opportunistic’, can positively influence strategic decision making for the benefit of the organization. See: Peter Ginter, W. Jack Duncan, and Linda Swayne, Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations (8th edition), John Wiley & Sons, 2018; Sebastian Fixson and Jay Rao, Learning Emergent Strategies through Design Thinking, Design Management Review, Vol. 25, Issue 1, Spring 2014; Antonio Dottore and David Corkindale, Towards a Theory of Business Model Adaptation, Regional Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 2009: 6th International Australian Graduate School Entrepreneurship Research Exchange, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, 2009; Walter Brenner and Falk Uebernickel, Design Thinking for Innovation: Research and Practice, Springer International Publishing, 2016; Marko Matalamaki, Effectuation, an emerging theory of entrepreneurship – towards a mature stage of the development, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 24, Issue 4, 2017; Steven Pattinson, Strategic Thinking: intelligent opportunism and emergent strategy – the case of Strategic Engineering Services, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Volume 7, No. 1, 2016:
“The purpose of strategic thinking, it has been suggested, is to: ‘discover novel, imaginative strategies which can re-write the rules of the competitive game; and to envision potential futures significantly different from the present’ (Heracleous, 1998, p 485). Strategic thinking is an essential prerequisite to firms’ survival (Beaver and Ross, 2000). More recently, strategic thinking has been related to the innovative aspects of a firm’s strategic planning (Harrison and St John, 2013). However, Mintzberg and Waters (1985) recognize that not all strategy is consciously planned, referring to ‘emergent strategy’ that is often developed intuitively by entrepreneurs rather than as the result of rational planning (Hill et al, 2014). The notion of emergent strategy is closely linked to the theory of ‘effectuation’ (Sarasvathy, 2001): that is, the notion that entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning and acting that focuses on the identification and exploitation of business opportunities from a broad general perspective, which Sarasvathy (2004) describes as the ‘essential agent’ of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is, therefore, associated with opportunity recognition and has been defined as the: ‘examination of how, by whom, and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and services are discovered, evaluated and exploited’ (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p 218), and the ability to recognize opportunities is widely viewed as a key step in the entrepreneurial process (Tang and Khan, 2007). The purpose of strategic thinking, on the other hand, is to clarify the future, allocate and manage resources and manage change (Thompson et al, 2014). However, to create the most value, entrepreneurial firms also need to act strategically, and this calls for an integration of both entrepreneurial and strategic thinking (Hitt et al, 2001), as Zahra and Nambisan (2012, p 219) explain: ‘Strategic thinking and the entrepreneurial activities … influence one another in a cycle that perpetuates and even sparks innovation’. The question is, how can these two concepts be successfully combined?
The concept of ‘intelligent opportunism’ refers to the idea that, although strategic thinking is inherently concerned with shaping and reshaping strategic intent, there must be room for flexibility (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989), thus allowing entrepreneurs to consider new opportunities. Intelligent opportunism involves entrepreneurs being open to new experiences that allow them to take advantage of emergent strategies that are, arguably, more relevant in a rapidly changing business environment and can be considered a form of ‘opportunistic’ strategy (Liedtka, 1998). … Intelligent opportunism is about adopting a flexible approach to strategy in order to take advantage of emerging strategies and new opportunities and, by being ‘intelligently opportunistic’, entrepreneurial leaders can influence strategic decision making (Haycock, 2012).”
Also see: Refilwe Mauda, The influence and causation strategies on corporate innovation in conditions of increased industry uncertainty, A research report re Master of Business Administration requirements, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, January 13, 2015; Laura Paulina Mathiaszyk, Corporate Effectuation: Effectual Strategy for Corporate Management, Inaugural Dissertation for Doctor rerum oeconomicarum, Faculty of Economics, Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, June 2017; Jeroen oude Luttikhuis, Effectuation and Causation: The Effect of “Entrepreneurial Experience” and “Market Uncertainty”: An Analysis of Causation and Effectuation in Business Plans, Master Thesis (MSc Business Administration), May 20, 2014; Andre Hermes, Causation and effectuation vs. analysis and intuition: conceptual parallels in the context of entrepreneurial decision-making, 7th IBA Bachelor Thesis Conference, July 1, 2016 (Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences).
[83] Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[84] Bill Josten, Resolutions for 2018: A Short List for Legal Practitioners from the Legal Executive, Legal Executive Institute.com, January 4, 2018; Stephen Mabey, Seven New Year’s Resolutions for Canadian Law Firms, LinkedIn, January 5, 2018. See: Patrick Lamb, The Law Firm of the Future, In Search of the Perfect Client Service (Patrick J Lamb.com), January 11, 2018.
[85] Eric Sigurdson, Strategic Management and Leadership – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Healthcare: ‘what got you here won’t get you there’, Sigurdson Post, July 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, An Integrated Approach to Strategy Implementation and Change Management – From the Legal Industry to Financial Services to Health Care: ‘a fundamental leadership and management skillset’, Sigurdson Post, August 31, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[86] Nigel Wallis, The 7 habits of highly effective law firm leaders, Legal Futures, November 30, 2017; Jim Pagliaro, What Law Firm Partners Lack: The Will to Act, Big Law Business.com (Bloomberg), January 10, 2017; John Olmstead, How Effective Law Firm Leadership Practices can help you Acquire and Keep your Clients, OlmsteadAssoc.com, 2010. Also see generally, The 2020 Future Ready Lawyer Survey: Performance Drivers, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020.
[87] Dan Ciampa, What CEOs Get Wrong About Vision and How to Get it Right, MIT Sloan Management Review, August 29, 2017:
“A leader’s vision — particularly if that leader needs to bring about significant change in the organization — should start as a vivid, credible image of an ideal future state. The clearer a CEO is about what people should do differently to achieve new, challenging objectives, the greater his or her chances of achieving the changes necessary for success. New behavior doesn’t come from missions, however aspirational, but from deep, emotional commitment to doing things differently.”
[88] Nina Kruschwitz, How to be a Strategic Leader, MIT Sloan Management Review, December 12, 2016:
“Strategic leadership can be learned, says Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Jesper Sørensen, and it’s critical to an organization’s long-term success. …
Learning to build a strategic organization involves not just turning a plan into coherent action, but paying attention to organizational culture. A strategic leader knows how to translate an action plan into a “sensible way of thinking about the world” that a group can align with. That in turn helps build a community that is willing and able to work from a shared sense of purpose.”
[89] Ian Holloway, The importance of institutional narrative, Canadian Lawyer, December 18, 2017.
[90] See for example, Mark Cohen, Goodbye Guild – Law’s Changing Culture, Forbes, July 3, 2017; Arnie Herz, what will drive change in law firm culture?, ArnieHarz.com, May 2, 2007; Reena SenGupta, The best law firm innovators alter their culture first, Financial Times, June 1, 2017; Frank Strong, Partner Compensation Models Drive Law Firm Culture, Business of Law Blog.com, July 2, 2012;
[91] For example only: Pam Woldow, Lower Revenue? Lower Utilization? Watch Out BigLaw – You Might Be Doing Something Right, LinkedIn, December 27, 2017 – “The bottom line is this: traditional law firm metrics don’t adequately identify the spectrum of benefits effective LPM [Legal Project Management – but for purpose of this example, can be technology, etc] can contribute to law firm success. LPM does indeed represent a paradigm shift in legal service delivery. That shift requires that firms now be willing to look to other metrics to evaluate success – both the firm’s and its individual lawyers’ – and to weigh them against (or at least integrate them with) traditional law firm reporting factors.”
[92] Doug Ready and Alan Mulally, How to Become a Game-Changing Leader, MIT Sloan Management Review, September 8, 2017:
“To successfully lead major organizational transformations, executives need to align purpose, performance, and principles within their companies. Doing so isn’t easy — and requires mastery of a wide range of leadership skills. …
At a time when the pace of change in business is faster than ever, we believe that building organizations with these three characteristics is no longer a choice. Being performance-driven is clearly essential to success; continuous disruption, rapid technological innovation, and turbulence require that today’s leaders build agile organizations with resilient employees in order to achieve superior performance.
But focusing on results alone is not enough. Demographic, cultural, and technological changes have led to a workforce that demands a set of operating principles characterized by core values such as transparency, trust, inclusion, and real-time collaboration to help guide behaviors and decision-making in companies. Finally, studies have shown that millennials are deeply motivated by corporate social responsibility and a compelling sense of purpose. Together, these forces make the case that companies that fail to aspire to align purpose, performance, and principles will also fail to attract the best talent. Furthermore, to achieve the kind of transformations that today’s fast-moving economy often requires of businesses, executives need engaged, committed employees who have opportunities to contribute their knowledge. Purpose and principles can help engage employees in support of high performance.”
[93] Eric Sigurdson, The Science of Leadership: the Legal Industry and an Integrated Approach to Modern Organizational Leadership, Sigurdson Post, February 28, 2019.
[94] See for example: Ralph Baxter, A Framework for Success: The 21st Century Law Firm Business Model, Legal Executive Institute.com, November 24, 2015. Also see, The 2020 Future Ready Lawyer Survey: Performance Drivers, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, 2020.
[95] Katie Walsh, Companies want lawyers to kill the billable hour, Financial Review, June 23, 2017.
[96] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018. Also see, 2018 Industry Outlook, Major, Lindsey & Africa, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers & In-House Counsel: Five New Year’s Resolutions – Leadership, Operations, Metrics, Technology, and External Counsel, Sigurdson Post, December 13, 2016.
[97] Cornelius Grossmann and Nicholas Bruch, EY Outlines its Strategy in Legal and Approach to Servicing Law Departments: EY’s goal is to become an enterprise legal service provider to law departments, blending tech, law and consulting to serve client’s needs, The American Lawyer (law.com), May 1, 2020; Connie Brenton and Sebastian Hartmann, The Invisible Threat to “Traditional” Law Firms, Consultants and other Professional Services Firms, LinkedIn, April 28, 2020 [Also see article in Medium.com dated May 4, 2020]; Dennis Garcia, How In-House Counsel Can “De-Lawyer” Their Work, LexBlog.com, April 29, 2020; Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018. Mark Cohen, The 2017 Georgetown Legal Report and the Sunset of the Traditional Law Firm Partnership Model, Legal Business World, February 7, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[98] Mark Cohen, COVID-19 and the Reformation of Legal Culture, Forbes, April 14, 2020.
[99] Joseph Andrew, The Next New Normal is a Bronze Age for Law, LinkedIn, May 1, 2020. Also see, Denton’s Joe Andrew: This is the bronze age for lawyers, The Lawyer, April 6, 2020.
[100] Vivian Hood, Demonstrating firm leadership in a pandemic, Jaffe (jaffepr.com), April 2, 2020 [reprinted May 6, 2020, Baker Tilly (bakertilly.ca)].
[101] Eric Andrew-Gee, Is the office era over? The surprising truth about working from home, Globe and Mail, May 29, 2020.
[102] Returning to the office: Midsize law firms’ strategies for emerging with strength, Legal Executive Institute (Thomson Reuters), June 1, 2020.
[103] Eric Andrew-Gee, Is the office era over? The surprising truth about working from home, Globe and Mail, May 29, 2020; Matthew Haag, Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm, New York Times, May 12, 2020; Barbara Ortutay, Working from home post-COVID-19? Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Mircosoft embracing remote work, USA Today, May 22, 2020; Alex Hern, Covid-19 could cause permanent shift towards home working, Guardian, March 13, 2020; Candy Cheng, Shopify Is Joining Twitter in Permanent Work-From-Home Shift, Bloomberg, May 21, 2020.
[104] James McLeod, Some companies are killing the office for good – and it could transform the way we live, Financial Post, May 13, 2020. Also see, Candy Cheng, Shopify Is Joining Twitter in Permanent Work-From-Home Shift, Bloomberg, May 21, 2020; Dana Mattioli and Konrad Putzier, When It’s Time to Go Back to the Office, Will It Still Be There?, Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2020; Jared Lindzon, As remote work rises, Canada is poised to become an even more popular option for U.S. employers, Globe and Mail, May 15, 2020; Jason Aten, Workers Don’t Want to Return to Offices. Start Preparing Now, Inc., May 6, 2020; Matthew Haag, Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm, New York Times, May 12, 2020; Barbara Ortutay, Working from home post-COVID-19? Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Mircosoft embracing remote work, USA Today, May 22, 2020; Alex Hern, Covid-19 could cause permanent shift towards home working, Guardian, March 13, 2020; Radheyan Simonpillai, Home for good? Working remotely will reshape Toronto’s office culture, Now.com, May 23, 2020; Bruce MacEwen, Welcome back to the office? Re-thinking law’s real estate for the post-corona age, Legal Business, May 20, 2020; Over 60% of legal staff want to work from home post lock-down, Legal Cheek, May 14, 2020; Meghan Tribe, Associates Stressed About Job Security Amid Pandemic, Study Says, Bloomberg Law, May 14, 2020.
[105] Nancy Rapoport, Catherine Krow, and Stephanie Corey, Legal Industry Survey: Navigating a Path Forward, Legal Decoder (legaldecoder.com), June 4, 2020.
[106] Catherine Nixey, Death of the Office, The Economist, May 5, 2020 (also see, Catherine Nixey, Death of the Office, 1843 Magazine, June-July 2020).
[107] Eric Sigurdson, Legal Profession on the Precipice: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Legal Technology, Sigurdson Post, July 31, 2020.
[108] Lyle Moran, Law firm revenue takes a nosedive during COVID-19, new survey data shows, ABA Journal, May 18, 2020.
[109] For example see, Michael Pelly, We want you back in the office, law firm tells partners, Financial Review, May 24, 2020.
[110] Mark Cohen, The FT Innovative Lawyers – Global Legal Hackathon: Meeting the Challenge of Law in the Digital Age, Forbes, May 26, 2020.
[111] Susan Smith Blakely, What can law firm leaders learn from a pandemic?, ABA Journal, May 14, 2020.
[112] Mark Cohen, The FT Innovative Lawyers – Global Legal Hackathon: Meeting the Challenge of Law in the Digital Age, Forbes, May 26, 2020.
[113] Eric Sigurdson, The Evolving Legal Service Delivery Model: A 2018 Survival Guide for BigLaw and Traditional Law Firms – building a new business model, Sigurdson Post, January 14, 2018.
[114] Matthew Haag, Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm, New York Times, May 12, 2020.
[115] Lawrence Summers, Covid-19 looks like a hinge in history, Financial Times, May 14, 2020; The Global Risks Report 2019 (14th Edition), World Economic Forum, 2019.
[116] Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez, Develop Agility that Outlasts the Pandemic, Harvard Business Review, May 15, 2020.
[117] Suzanne Ganier, Law Firm Competition: The Landscape Has Changed, LinkedIn, May 6, 2020.
[118] Gina Passarella, Talking Business of Law: The Dance of Change, The American Lawyer, June 27, 2017.
[119] Joshua Lenon and Bryce Tarling, The Next Phase of Legal Technology Has Already Been Built, Above the Law, December 7, 2017.
