Finding perspective in a strange time

I am a planner. Like many people in legal operations, I am constantly thinking about what comes next and how to get there. The last few months, of course, have been a real blow to all of us planners. Sometimes life takes your carefully laid out plans, rips them up, and tosses the pieces in the air.

Almost overnight, our lives changed. My days used to kick off with a mad rush to get the kids to school and fight traffic to get to the office. I used to see my kids for a half hour each morning, then maybe an hour or two in the evening. In between, I was rushing from meeting to meeting, barely taking a break to get everything done by the end of the workday. It was a good life, but it felt chaotic and rushed, and I found myself wishing for more time with my family.

The hard turn my family took into a shelter-in-place, home schooling lifestyle was a shock for sure. It also came with some important gifts, the first of which is gratitude.

Unlike so many, my husband and I can keep working remotely. The pressures we face are nothing compared to what some families confront. This is not to say we don’t feel frustrated or anxious sometimes, but we realize how fortunate we are to be safe and whole at a time when so many are not. The problems we have – homeschooling three healthy, feisty young children while juggling our work commitments – are good problems.

Another important gift: the time we have been able to spend with our loved ones. My favorite part of each day was watching my five year-old doing her P.E. class. She goes at it with impressive intensity, concentrating hard during the yoga segment and huffing and puffing through jumping jacks and burpees. After months spent in the house together, I look at her, my other girls, and my husband in a new way. We are all learning so much about each other. 

This desire to connect, and appreciation for others, extends beyond the people in my house. I have thought more about, and reconnected with, old friends around the world more in the last few months. Instead of being so caught up in the whirlwind of my busy days, I have found myself making time to reach out and catch up.

A big change in life context can sometimes bring about a big shift in perspective. We have the physical space and time, and mental distance, to see our world with more clarity. We can see the things in front of us better and value them properly. This is the silver lining of this moment, I believe.

The power of purpose

We spend so much time preoccupied with the “what” and the “how” it can be easy to lose track of the “why.” When you strip away all the noise of our busy lives and crowded minds, what rises to the top?

What matters most? This simple question has been a huge focus for us at CLOC over the last few months.

It is a good time for reflection. Our little group, that I used to call a “book club,” has grown into a world-class organization. Once just a small gathering of contrarians trying to define a new space called “legal operations,” we are now active in leading companies across the globe. Representing major industries over many geographies, our members are pushing and testing the limits of what is possible. As a result, legal operations has moved from a fringe idea, to a back-burner initiative, to a strategic mandate for most companies.

So just what are we doing? Why are we here? When my fellow board members and I recently stepped back to ask ourselves this, the answer was simple: we are a global community focused on redefining the business of law.

We are taking one of the oldest, most tradition-bound industries, into the future. We are all different, carrying our own perspectives and needs, but all connected by the power of one bedrock principle: There must be a better way.

I am talking about changing systems and processes of an entire industry. And that can sound dry and academic to some, but those systems and processes are driven by people. So what we are really talking about is actually vital and deeply human. This is about reinventing one of the oldest industries in profound ways that affect many, many people.

This is a huge task, and one that will only be possible with the contributions of every part of the ecosystem. It will take a long time, and it will only happen with the help of many entities pulling together, but it is already underway.

A new direction

Getting clear on our vision and on what really matters has helped us think about where to take CLOC. Before it is anything else, CLOC is a community, a movement of like-minded people. As that community grew larger, more diverse, and more international, we realized that we needed to evolve.

We were at a crossroads. We had come a long way, but still had a long way still to go. To launch into our next stage, we realized, would require investing in our organization. There were so many things we wanted to do that demanded more resources and infrastructure. We realized that we needed to build a professional team equal to the energy and passion of our community.

That is why I was so excited to bring in our new Executive Director, Betsi Roach. In just a few months under her leadership, and with the support of the strong team she is putting in place, CLOC has already added scale and capabilities. We are working to improve the way we serve and reach members in deep ways. I am so excited for the future.

In some ways, the pandemic has forced us to accelerate our evolution in positive ways. As an organization founded in the U.S., we have long worked to extend our value and reach internationally. Canceling our in-person events has meant that we had to develop new ways to reach and serve global audiences. I am counting down the days until our Global Institute, a fully virtual conference scheduled for November 10th (Pacific Time). This is going to be a great opportunity for the community to come together in a new way. We are hard at work on the content and the curriculum, taking the results of the feedback we received from over 400 of you. I think people will really enjoy it.

We can do better

There is a phrase that I have been hearing a lot lately: “It’s time to get back to normal.” I understand why people say that, and the desire for a return to the familiar and comfortable. When it comes to the legal industry, however, I could not disagree more strongly. The very LAST thing we need is to go back to “normal.”

We can, and must, do so much better. I look around our industry and, for all the progress we have made, I see so many places we can improve. I see huge opportunities to make our industry more effective, efficient, and equitable. From the way we make decisions, to how we identify and hire talent, to how we create value chains, we are barely scratching the surface.

Our organization has always been a catalyst accelerating change, but current events have added fuel to the fire. After many years pushing a stubborn, static industry to transform, we have a historic opportunity to create real change. The COVID shutdown, the economic shock, and the rise of racial and social justice movements are all putting pressure on the legal industry to transform.

We have the chance to help shape that new direction for the betterment of all. We have the chance to create the future rather than react to it. Let’s seize that chance together.

May 2020 |
Lorna Synan, Strategic Sourcing Manager – Legal Ideation and Transformation, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Robert Taylor, VP and Senior Corporate Counsel – Legal Ideation and Transformation, Liberty Mutual Insurance

Change is hard. Encouraging innovation and implementing change in an established and successful organization is even harder. Changing the legal service delivery model and implementing meaningful legal innovation, seemingly impossible. But it can be done. By leveraging techniques based in neuroscience, you can help people overcome emotional resistance that can be brought about by budget constraints, business imperatives, and pressures of the external marketplace. All these daily pressures and human nature itself can compete with their innate understanding and recognition of the need to innovate. Neuroscience studies the way the human brain works and how we respond to certain stimuli. It helps us understand what influences the way people make basic decisions. Learning more about motivators and stressors can help you shape how your employees or stakeholders respond to change. Which is why more and more organizations are hiring industrial psychologists and/or neuroscientists to help them better understand employees’ mindsets to unlock greater performance.

At Liberty Mutual Insurance, we began our innovation journey by asking a few questions: How do you innovate within a Legal department in an already conservative organization that is designed to measure risk? How do you overcome the psychological barriers of both individuals and groups in order to effectuate meaningful change? We sought our answers from a wide range of experts and share below neuroscience-based techniques (classification, safety, and support) from sources that helped us successfully navigate implementing legal innovation that aligned with our strategy.

Author’s note: We share a lot of content in our organization, none better than ‘Steal like an Artist’ by Austin Kleon who points out that there are very few original ideas. We will do our best to credit the ideas below where we can and impart universal concepts fairly, but we do not claim to be wicked smart professors who have all the answers and are lecturing from the front of a tiered classroom.

Classification: Innovators and Protectors

You will broadly find two equally important groups within your own work environment, typically classified as innovators and protectors. Through classification, you can better understand how to approach and harness the capabilities of both groups and facilitate change. The innovators will create, foster and thrive on new and ambitious ideas while the protectors will defend the status quo and prevent loss.

Honor the ideas of the innovators by clearly defining goals and objectives that can quantify the impact of their contributions. Harness the innovator’s energy to support your department’s vision but be aware of attempts to hijack your strategic plan for their own agenda, as this could derail progress. Engage the innovators and align their energy with the larger strategy your leadership has set for your organization. If you don’t, the people who you thought might be your biggest allies could turn into your biggest headache. In the end, assume positive intent with your innovators and let them have a voice within a structure.

Listen carefully to the concerns of the protectors by recognizing the pressures of cost containment, technology limitations, and the need for meaningful use cases. You must also make the protectors aware of the dangers of not moving forward at all, potentially resulting in a loss in market share or competitive advantage. It is critical to understand why a protector’s “fence” may have been put up in the first place. This is stressed in a principle called Chesterton’s Fence. In Chesterton’s 1929 book, The Thing, he describes the case of reformers (innovators) who notice something, such as a fence, and fail to see the reason for its existence. Before they decide to remove it, they must figure out why it exists in the first place. If they do not do this, they are likely to do more harm than good with its removal. It is a straightforward principle, but one that is often not considered by a team of eager innovators.Many of the problems we face in a legal system or highly regulated business occur when we intervene without an understanding of what the consequences might be. If a fence exists, there is likely a reason for it. In a nod to the world class design experts at IDEO, we use a Venn diagram to analyze new ideas within existing “fences.” It forces both innovators and protectors to focus on the ideas that will work and uncover what will have the greatest impact and chance at success. When looking at a new idea, examine the feasibility (technical and regulatory), desirability (will they use it) and viability (financial resources) of the project. You will find that innovators thrive on desirable projects, whereas protectors often bring up technical and financial constraints. In order to execute on innovative projects, you will need to meet all three requirements.

Creating Safety: Threat vs. Safety

When you encounter something new, your brain is alerted, neurons are activated, and hormones are released as you try and figure out what the new thing is. If you think the new item is dangerous (maybe because it changes the way you work), then your reaction may be a threat response with a fight or flight trigger. In order to minimize a threat response in your stakeholder’s reaction to a new idea or initiative, you need to create a culture of psychological safety and trust. There are various models that help facilitate trust in the workplace, including David Rock’s SCARF model. The SCARF model emphasizes the importance of recognizing a job well done, independence and autonomy, building strong team relationships, fairness and transparency to achieve a sense of reward.

Creating this environment encourages everyone to take calculated risks and share in the process of innovation. For example, introducing a new technology vendor, even one that you feel will be beneficial for your stakeholders, may threaten their autonomy or create ambiguity for them without establishing trust. By implementing “Vendor Days” (in which one or more vendors can explain their services in a casual setting) in our department, we share new legal service models and technology with senior managers, influencers, and individual contributors in a format that allows for self-discovery. Providing an open forum for learning about a potential vendor allows stakeholders to relate to the opportunity on their own terms and feels far more collaborative. The vendor can focus on presenting information and capabilities, and answering questions, rather than attempting to be purely persuasive. Making a connection between the benefits of the new technology and the stakeholder’s own work product is powerful and often results in a request to partner in the implementation (pull) rather than requiring pursuit of an implementation (push) because a threat response may have been created. This dynamic eliminates the idea that only one team or one person has innovative ideas to push on the department and instead establishes that ideas can be pulled from all areas and levels far more successfully and in a way that allows for meaningful adoption and effective deployment of new technology.

Support: Alone and Together

Collaboration between innovators and protectors and creating a culture of psychological safety depends upon people working together. But for people to work together successfully, you need to nurture the individual. If you have been exposed to a psychology class, you are likely aware of the popular theory of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” from his book Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow’s Hierarchy (see insert) is a tiered system of needs beginning with basic survival then ascending through freedom from fear, social belonging, and self-esteem towards the end goal of self-actualization.

When considered relative to the workplace, motivation often increases as needs at each ascending level are met. In a professional work environment, we can concentrate primarily on self-esteem and self-actualization through respect and personal growth. This is where accomplished professionals thrive. At the apex of the triangle, individuals find themselves motivated to come up with new ideas to help others, the department, and the team.

Innovation may start with a single individual, but it is a team sport. All too often when someone tries to facilitate change on their own before they achieve buy-in from others, they fail. It is not necessarily that the individual is wrong to try, it just might be that their idea or the concept that they are trying to implement needs to mature. If the idea is too fragile and not enough people have gotten behind it, the idea will likely get destroyed by others. In order to grow these ideas into fruitful use cases, you must leverage diversity of thought and bring in different perspectives to analyze and strengthen the idea. One way we look to create a culture of diverse thought is through our “Design Challenges.” These day-long sessions promote human centered design and focuses on users, their issues, daily activities and goals through an empathetic lens. Many ideas presented at these events start with an individual thought but are made better through the collective experience. While these sessions occasionally lead to new creative solutions that are incorporated into department strategies, the participants are always left feeling more collaborative and motivated.

We have shared just a few of the ways we have found success implementing innovative change within a legal environment. We absolutely fell and skinned our knees along our journey, as you will. But with each fall there was a lesson and new perspective on how to move forward. There are a multitude of ways to improve the psychological safety of your employees, humble inquiry being among the best and least threatening way to get people to come to understand a problem from a new perspective. People tend to thrive when you seek to understand them and the first step before modifying any aspect of a system is to understand it. Don’t remove that “fence” before you know why it was there in the first place. Only then can you credibly propose your change. In the next 90 days, we challenge you to adopt one of these techniques and observe the results. If you do, we guarantee you will be pleased.

May 2020| Rachita Maker, Vice President, Chief of Staff and Head of Legal Operations, Tata Communications Limited

Do any lawyers remember going to law school and hearing the words “project management”? I certainly did not, and I suspect most of my colleagues didn’t either. It is a different world now with a number of institutes focusing on Legal Project Management and I see there are multiple courses available on the topic. Legal Project Management or LPM is an identified functional area in The CLOC Core 12 for Legal Operations, therefore, identified as a key skill for the legal operation professional.

I chanced upon project management purely by accident in my fifth year as a lawyer. Overnight, I was handed a high-volume complex contract management project with a tight deadline. In an instant, I was made responsible for a team of twenty bright, young lawyers who were relying on me to give them guidance; a demanding client who had expectations beyond the project scope; a deliverable that I had no idea on how to execute; and a management team that wanted me to make the whole thing work. No pressure? To tell the truth, I loved the challenge and still do today.

So, for all the lawyers or legal operations professions who get thrown into large engagements or complex implementation projects, with no one to tell them how it is done – I am sharing a few of the strategies I have forged over many years of managing projects successfully in the legal services industry.

Overview of Legal Project Management

My experience has taught me to view project management as having four pillars – client management, delivery management, team and stakeholder management, and financial management.

Projects within the legal industry could include large scale contract lifecycle management implementations including data migration from old systems to new, obligations management, M&A due diligence, contract drafting and negotiations engagements, and 50-state regulatory research to name a few. Typical challenges in legal projects relate to: scope; balancing the right number resources while ensuring subject matter expertise; maintaining quality; anticipating and mitigating risks; anticipating changes in projects due to unforeseen circumstances like regulatory changes, changes in production timeline or changes in client requirements and unresponsive clients.

Below is my advice for transitioning from a great lawyer to a successful project manager that no one spoke about in law school:

1. Understand the “pulse” of your client
Understanding the “pulse” of your client – in other words, learning what they value most in the delivery of a project and why – is the key to any successful client-provider relationship. No matter what happens, you should be the go-to person for your client. Set up a communication schedule that matches your client’s needs and try to anticipate what they might need next.

I start any large project by identifying what is most critical to my client. Sometimes it is quality; other times it is timeline; and all too often it is cost. While most clients will say that ALL of those factors are equally important, there is usually one aspect that stands out as the priority.

For example, in a 50-state regulatory research project where timing is of the essence for your client, spending too much time ensuring you have researched every angle and missing the expected deadline will likely leave you with an unhappy client. In this example, setting realistic expectations up front on how the research might be restricted to meet the timeline would likely have led to the client suggesting more specific instructions to provide better focus for the research. As you build trust through a series of meetings and in meeting mutually agreed-upon expectations, the client will start to see you as an extension of their team.

The best way to set and adjust expectations is to create a regular cadence of communications that matches your client’s style. As lawyers, we tend to get so involved in our work that we wait to go to the client with our final “masterpiece”. There is nothing worse for a client than not knowing how their project is progressing. I recommend having at least a once a week check-in call, email or meeting. Depending on the timeline and scale of the project, you may want to have more frequent, shorter, or more casual conversations to establish rapport with your client. These meetings are also a great way to learn about the client and anticipate their upcoming needs.

2. Manage “scope creep”
For your clients and for your organization, success is most often measured in financial terms. As project managers, you manage the budget by avoiding “scope creep” – in other words, ensuring that the requirements of a project have not unnecessarily expanded, making the project more expensive than anticipated. Scope changes are easier to identify if a client makes explicit changes to the deliverables or timing of the project; but in practice, small accretive changes are made in smaller bits and become difficult to quantify – in other words, they creep up until the project is ultimate off-budget.

Managing scope begins even before a project starts. As more clients now want fixed pricing or alternate pricing models for projects, the days of hourly billing have almost disappeared. Clients routinely ask for a quote without giving, or sometimes not knowing, any details around the project. Imagine a template harmonization project for a large multinational company – at a minimum, it would help to know how many templates, across how many geographies, the number of business units with overlapping templates, etc. Even if you are able to get some of this information in advance, chances are that you will get answers in approximates, but the client will demand certainty on pricing. It is important to define the project scope to the best of your ability and build in strong assumptions to protect your client and your organization.

Even with the best planning, scope creep can continue through the life of the project and often happens in short bursts. Since we are anxious to maintain good client relationships and we want to earn their business, we tend to overlook the scope creep issues, often leading to unanticipated bills to the client or unsustainably low margins for your organization. I recommend logging all requested changes, no matter how small they seem at the time, and their potential impact on the project. Assess these impacts with your clients and organization at regular intervals in order to anticipate any potential changes in cost or timing. Your clients will appreciate the open communication. The alternative, which is not mentioning scope changes until it is too late, can chip away at trust with your client and your organization.

3. Measure and meet your client’s quality and timeline expectations
As lawyers, we are trained to provide high-quality work product. After all, our work product is the showcase of our talent. While it is easy to control our own deliverables and quality, it can be difficult to be responsible for what someone else is producing. The truth is that as project managers, we are responsible for the overall quality of the project. For example, whether you are overseeing 5 people working on an M&A transaction or 30 people working on a document review, you will need to ensure that quality and the timeline are met by the entire team working together.

The first step to providing quality work is to define and measure what quality means to the client. Work with your client to define quality metrics and then track them. As a project manager one should be able, at any point in time, to confidently talk about the “quality percentage” of their engagements. Tracking quality through pre-defined metrics also helps project managers identify if issues are related to a particular person or if those issues are general across the team.

While high-quality work is expected, most legal projects are deadline-driven, whether it is a deadline related to production, regulatory demands or a transaction. As lawyers, we are used to burning the midnight oil to meet our deadlines and produce the best output we can. The challenge is to help your project team stay motivated to work the extra hours when large deadlines are looming. In order to minimize all-nighters or unsustainable work hours, as well as to avoid any curveballs that may come up in a project, I usually try to build a buffer in project timelines. For example, if I have a 4-week project that needs about ten people, I will staff it with twelve people instead and set an internal timeline of 3 weeks so that I can conduct last minute checks, conduct quality review and make changes that may have come up during the life of the project.

4. Build and maintain reports that your clients and management will value
Maintaining daily, weekly and monthly reports on your engagements will benefit both your clients and your organization. As a project manager you are expected to have a real-time understanding of project metrics – whether they relate to number of documents, hours worked on the project, throughput per hour, quality measures and any other information that can be sliced and diced.

I recommend updating clients and other stakeholders with progress reports. It helps to understand your client and stakeholder communication styles and timing, and to set expectations upfront. Weekly, or sometimes daily, reports may be needed. I was once working on a project that I knew was VERY important to my CEO, and I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and worry about where we were on the project. I proactively set up daily reports, and it worked wonderfully to keep my CEO updated and comfortable with the project.

There are a number of tools and technologies that can help you track the progress and performance of your project. Using automated workflow tools, you can generate delivery dashboards, quality metrics, monthly information reports, etc. These tools help you collect analytics on each activity of your project. For longer-term engagements, I have also seen the Balanced Score Card approach work beautifully with clients, as they can see a holistic view of the team’s performance based on operational and delivery excellence, client satisfaction and additional value by way of innovation. As lawyers, we are not always proficient with tools and technology in the market place, but as good project managers we need to identify the best-suited person in our team who can support us in generating and maintaining reports.

5. Invest in your team’s growth
A colleague of mine once said, “After a certain point in your career, it isn’t what your boss thinks of you, but what your team thinks of you,” and I totally agreed with her. Your team is a testament of you. A great project manager knows how to get buy-in from the team, give them the right training and resources, challenge them and use their strengths to the fullest. I try to build my project teams with complementary personality types to provide balance. No one person can do everything and most project managers think that the burden of performance is on them. The truth is that we should use our team’s strength to the fullest – this not only helps them to enhance their skills and helps them feel vested, but also takes some of the burden off our shoulders.

Remember that no matter how much you plan, there are things that may be out of your control. Great project managers focus on what is in their control, escalate what is not, identify risks early on and mitigate them to the best of their ability. As lawyers and professionals, we juggle multiple projects every day, and effective project management will help us stay organized.

With excerpts from “The Ten Questions to Ask Yourself to Influence Your Future”, as Presented by Dr. Zachary Walker, Educator, Author, and International Speaker, University College London Institute of Education at the CLOC 2020 London Institute.  He can be contacted on LinkedIn or through his website at www.drzacharywalker.com.

One of the most complicated tasks facing companies today is the challenge of aligning the cultures and expectations of multiple generations in their organization. Legal departments are not immune to these challenges. Like others, legal is often composed of multiple generational influences from Boomers to Gen Xers to Millennials. Gen Z is just starting to enter the workforce which brings in yet another shift in workplace dynamics. Today’s leaders need to manage the differences and similarities between four to six generations while integrating them into a cohesive, functional, high-performing team.

Each person comes with a different set of expectations and definitions of loyalty, ethics, and skills. Leaders need to shift to make the most of these energies and skill sets that bring incredible potential to both the department and company. The generation into which one is born is an important determinant of these personal characteristics. Of course, each individual is different – however, generational trends tend to shape ideas on “big picture” issues such as the value of teamwork, workplace expectations, and the relationship between the individual and society, and each generation tends to share similar experiences as a result of growing up at the same time.

A 2014 Harvard Business Review article exclaimed that “for the first time in history, five generations will soon be working side by side.” It continued:

“The Boomer mystified by Facebook; the Millennial who wear flip-flops in the office; the Traditionalist (born prior to 1946) who seemingly won’t ever retire; the cynical Gen Xer who’s only out for himself; and the Gen 2020er [known as Gen Z today] – born after 1997- who appears surgically attached to her smartphone.”

If you’ve attended a seminar or conference on this topic, you may have learned that these stereotypes are not valid and that all generations can and do share common values and goals.  Still, generational tensions exist within our multi-generational workforces and it’s our job to help our employees recognize and respect the skill sets that each generation brings to the table.

The U.S. Government projects the number of workers over the age of 75 will double in the next decade. In many cases, workers continue to work longer because they can’t afford to retire when they reach retirement age. And many workers in the legal profession choose to work longer because they enjoy their work and value their relationships with their coworkers. 

Generation Z, our youngest generation of workers, is just entering the workforce. By 2026, that group will surpass the number of Millennials (who are now the largest) in the workforce. These two generations will define the future of work.  Whether a 35-year-old manager managing a Boomer workforce and Gen X workforce or a 65- year-old manager managing a Gen Y and Millennial workforce, or somewhere in between, it is incumbent upon leaders and managers to know who they lead. To be successful, we will have to understand what each generation wants out of their jobs and how they envision work.

Companies that shift to strike a multi-generation allegiance will have an efficiency advantage over others that don’t. A multi-generational team offers a diverse way of looking at a project or problem. Leading them can be both a challenge and an opportunity. Understanding who they are is key.

Leading an Inter-Generational Workforce

In January 2020, the CLOC London Institute ended its educational conference with a session led by Dr. Zachary Walker from the University College London. Dr. Walker’s session was one of the highest rated sessions during the Institute. His current work focuses on Generation Z, educational neuroscience and high performance leadership.

During his session, Dr. Walker explained a few of the traits of generational groups that are, or will be, employed by your organization in the future and challenged everyone to be willing to adapt their leadership style accordingly. 

Generation Z: (Born 1996 – 2015)

According to Statista, Gen Z represents 24% of the workforce worldwide. Gen Z grew up in households that were significantly affected by 911 and the 2008 recession. As a result, financial security and stability are vital to them.

Gen Z’ers are entrepreneurial and ambitious. Surveys show that about half of them want to work for themselves – because they believe they can do “it” better – while half also want to do something that will change the world. They are competitive and financially driven. They have expectations of advancing in their roles quickly and being rewarded financially. This group is prone to burn-out, so they will need your assistance to achieve work-life “harmony.”

Gen Z values authenticity and meaningful interactions. Although they are digitally astute, they prefer to communicate face-to-face and work collaboratively. Gen Z craves feedback in real-time. Waiting until their annual evaluation to provide negative feedback will likely offend them. They want mentorship and constant feedback. They appreciate it and value it.

They value inclusion, social justice, diversity, and fairness. Dr. Walker noted organizations that simply aspire to these values would not impress a Gen Z candidate. They are influenced by “Doers.”  Congruence between what organizations say and what they do is absolutely critical to Gen Z.

Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 – 1995  

By this year, 2020, Millennials are forecast to comprise half of the American workforce, and by 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce. 

Millennials do not want the life of their parents, who valued work over relationships. They value work-life balance suited to allow them to enjoy their lives outside of work. Work satisfaction and financial stability are essential to Millennials; however, they aspire to strike a healthy balance between work and relationships outside of work.

This generation seeks a first-name basis relationship with their employers. They treat their employers respectfully, but they expect their employer to earn their respect. They enjoy a relaxed work environment where colleagues at various levels of leadership and responsibility can easily talk, joke, and laugh with each other while maintaining the appropriate hierarchical management structure.

Millennials value honesty, are eager to learn, appreciate personal connections, efficiency, and a sense of community.  

Generation X: Born 1965-1976   

According to Statista, Gen X represents 35% of the workforce worldwide.

The income gap between Gen X and Millennials grows wider each year.  Generation X makes more money and spends more money – 11% more than Boomers and 33% more than Millennials. They spend more because they are raising a family and caring for aging parents. The dual responsibility of caring for parents and children puts a high demand on their resources. 

Gen X values freedom and responsibility in the workplace. They are more likely to question authority than their parents and prefer flexibility in work arrangements. They don’t want to be micromanaged.  

Baby Boomers: Born 1946 – 1964 

Baby Boomers represent 6% of the workforce worldwide.

Baby boomers are hard-working – some would say workaholics – and motivated by position, prestige, perks, and money. They are independent, confident, and define themselves by their professional accomplishments. Their parents grew up during the Great Depression, and Boomers grew up under the threat of global nuclear war. They were exposed to protective drills in school in the event of a nuclear attack, lived in households stocked with food and supplies, and knew where they would shelter in the event of a nuclear attack.

A “good worker” was defined as having a strong work ethic and the willingness to “do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

Baby Boomers are often critical of younger generations for what they perceive as a lack of work ethic and commitment. 

What does the future of work look like across multiple generations?

The influence of Gen Z and Gen Y is already changing what work looks like. The future of work will value health and wellness, offer flexible workspaces and work locations, emphasize continuous professional development, use technology to create efficiencies, and enable a mobile workforce. According to Dr. Walker, the future of work will include workplace neurodiversity and the use of collective intelligence to solve problems.  

“Neurodiversity is a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. These differences can include those labeled with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others.”

Research suggests that neurodiverse individuals receive, process, and interpret information differently and often solve problems in unconventional ways. These employees are loyal, highly dependable, and adept at fitting into different work cultures.

Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, joint efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. Dr. Walker explained it this way:

“[A] group-based approach to harnessing the collective intelligence of people who work together, matching different skills and knowledge sets of internal experts to address future project needs.”

Collaboration is how younger generations prefer to work. As leaders, we are responsible for “upskilling” our employees so that we can build an environment that supports collective thinking to solve problems.

What now? 

Multiple generational organizations are the future and understanding the behaviors and drivers for each generation is critical for success. There are new ways of working every day. Collaboration and communication continue to be two of the most important components in bringing the generations together, especially as the world embraces a work from home mentality. 

Every generation is expressing a need for more flexibility, the opportunity to shift hours—to start their workdays later, or earlier, for example, or put in time at night, if necessary. Work-life balance drives satisfaction for all generations. The similarities in attitudes across generations are striking when it comes to benefits that drive satisfaction.

Multi-generation organizations are here to stay. The key is to foster the intergenerational culture by respecting the varied differences each generation contributes. It also means working as a proactive leader to eliminate strife, find the similarities and strengths and establish clear communication paths to ensure loyalty and success.

We’ve met with more than 50 clients in the past 12 months and have enjoyed a front seat to the transformation happening across legal departments. Our meetings have reinforced that CLOC’s 12 core competencies are not stagnant and continue to evolve in their application and impact. Here is a taste of what we are seeing you all accomplish. You can use these to plan your next project, benchmark with your colleagues, and to continue to show the value that you bring to your legal departments and companies.

Financial Management: This has evolved into so much more than simply reporting on spend or managing to the budget. Legal departments are overlaying spend against key objectives of the company to ensure that the allocation of legal resources aligns with the strategic priorities of the company.

Vendor Management: We started with preferred vendors and negotiating favorable pricing. Legal departments are working with vendors to solve common challenges in technology, ediscovery, and more. They are also asking vendors for data dashboarding to spot trends and inform future action.

Cross-Functional Alignment: Legal operations roles are often filled with business professionals from within the company, including finance, products and IT. These hires bring with them relationships and institutional know-how, and allow companies to repurpose people, process, and technology used in the business for use in the legal department.

Technology & Process Support: Legal operations is changing the culture of legal departments by driving the adoption of technology and incorporating process-driven workflows into serving the business.

Service Delivery & Alternative Support Models: This is not just about insourcing versus outsourcing. It is about right sourcing the work to ensure that tasks are assigned to the right resource. This allows everyone on the team to focus on the high-impact and high-value work. Legal operations professionals are shining a light on churn and helping legal departments to stop doing tasks that don’t bring value.

Organizational Design, Support & Management: Legal operations departments are no longer behind the scenes. The groups are front and center within legal departments and the business. Legal operations professionals are increasingly leading pitch meetings, panel selection, fee negotiations, and outside counsel evaluations, and have more optics into organizational changes impacting their legal departments.

Communications: Together with their GCs, legal operations departments are helping accelerate change and are creating innovation fluency about the company’s business and legal industry. At legal department meetings, they are highlighting how technology is transforming their business, mapping legal goals to innovation objectives of the business, and are training on skills core to legal operations. At legal department retreats, they are changing the curriculum to include design thinking sessions, technology updates, and data metrics discussions. They are also bringing together outside counsel to share innovation success stories so that they may be replicated across all firms supporting the company.

Data Analytics: Using data, legal operations is changing the conversation about value. What is the business goal for the matter? How will success be measured? Are legal resources aligned to the business’s strategies? Legal operations departments are driving the creation of dashboards to spot trends, inform future action, and identify missed opportunities. They are also capturing knowledge about the performance and use of their outside counsel. This includes tracking who at what firms have done work in particular areas for the company, working toward a future where legal operations can provide predictive analytics on who is best suited to solve a specific problem for the business.

Litigation Support & IP Management: Legal departments are partnering with IT to bring even more of the ediscovery lifecycle in-house. Teams from information security, IT, internal investigations, and legal operations are working together to show how particular license offerings can reduce spend exponentially. They are using advanced features to identify risk before litigation and are reducing their digital footprint with their vendors by 50 to 90%.

Knowledge Management: In response to the needs of the business, especially during periods of rapid growth, legal operations departments are creating on-demand, self-service legal solutions for their internal customers. To do so, they scope what the business needs, how much of the need requires interaction with a lawyer, and what portion can be solved with automation and standardization. These solutions are driven by playbooks, AI and legal bots.

Information Governance & Records Management: Legal operations departments are creating programs that provide the business better access to information so that it can harness data for a strategic advantage and, in some cases, monetize that data. They are driving the creation of policy and procedure that is practical and enhances service to the business. They are also complying with emerging data privacy laws and protecting against data breach and the associated reputational damage.

Strategic Planning: Legal operations leaders are reporting directly to their general counsel and are helping set the strategy and goals for the legal department. They increasingly have a seat at the table and are measuring their achievement and performance against the established goals for the legal department.

Today’s world is one of intertwining systems, in which many challenges are fluid, multifaceted, and undeniably human. Organizations, inside and outside of the legal sector, must come to grips with – and even embrace – disruptive forces like technology. They must ask themselves how they will evolve in response to such rapid, technological change – and how they will support team members and transform large systems simultaneously.

For many, the problem-solving methodology – known as design thinking – is an effective way to answer these and other big questions. In fact, it is slowly becoming an important part of today’s complex, interconnected world. Design thinking is vital to the development and refinement of skills – those allowing us to better understand and respond to organizational and societal changes. It helps designers, especially, carry out research and brainstorm ideas before creating prototypes and testing out viable solutions.

Design thinking is more than just a process, though. It combines the possibilities of technology, the needs of people, and the requirements for overall business success. Thinking more like a designer can help transform organizations’ products, services, and entire business strategy. That’s because the approach brings together what is the most feasible, technologically speaking, with what is the most desirable from a human standpoint.

The Evolution of Design Thinking

Compared to the centuries-old scientific method, design thinking is relatively new as a mindset and methodology. In a way, it sprung from the industrial revolution, in which the limits of what we thought was technologically possible were pushed in dramatic fashion. Industrial designers, architects, and engineers, etc. – driven by the significant societal changes of the 20th century – later came together in a demonstration of collective problem-solving.

But it was cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon who was the first to mention design thinking as a way of conceptualizing. In his 1969 book, The Sciences of the Artificial, Simon offered many ideas considered to be the principles of design thinking. Then, in the 1970s, design thinking started to address the human and technological needs of the day.

Celebrated designers who have adopted this method include Naoto Fukasawa, Saul Bass, Florence Knoll, and Le Corbusier, as well as Ray and Charles Eames. They each knew that coming up with elegant answers requires paying attention to the context of the problems and the consequences of the solutions. It means taking into account human priorities along the way to innovation.

Today, design thinking is on its way to becoming one of the leading innovation methodologies. Across many industries and disciplines, hundreds of thousands of people have now been introduced to the most basic concepts of design thinking. Through it, many have even experienced those ‘a-ha’ moments, in which they suddenly view their work – and the world – from an entirely new perspective. Individuals realize their own creative capacity, while problem-solving teams make progress toward their goals in less time than it takes through traditionally entrenched methods. Design thinking has generated groundbreaking solutions in the most exciting, innovative ways. It has been promoted at every level of business, and is behind the success of a number of high-profile, global companies, particularly Google, Apple, and Airbnb.

The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Of course, there’s no one definition of design thinking. But most agree that it is a systematic yet adaptable approach to problem-solving and innovation. Think of it as a non-linear methodology that offers a means to think deeply outside the box in order to solve problems that are ill-defined – or even unknown. Design thinking, after all, is human-centered, intentional, experimental, and responsive, as well as completely tolerant of failure, itself.

More specifically, design thinking consists of five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The first phase allows you to better understand a problem from an empathetic standpoint. The next phase is an opportunity to analyze and synthesize all of the information gathered during the first phase, before identifying and defining the core problem. In the third phase, you can begin to think ‘outside of the box,’ looking at the problem in alternative ways and generating ideas based on the knowledge acquired during the first two phases. In the fourth phase, you can come up with possible solutions to the problem – those fully explored during the first three stages. Finally, the solutions that are identified in the previous phase are put to a rigorous test.

The Future of Design Thinking

As design thinking moves further away from being a nascent practice, more people will appreciate its value, becoming committed, leading practitioners of design thinking, themselves. Of course, design thinking takes some learning and practice. It takes time to tinker with and test, not to mention an overall willingness to fail early-on – and often – throughout the entire process.

At the end of the day, though, in-house counsels and the like should try looking at large-scale challenges in legal through the eyes of a designer. In that way, they can become dynamic and superior problem-solvers, themselves. They can help create design criteria, and brainstorm and test solutions that can eventually become real-world innovations.

Also key to problem-solving are the craft and expertise of designers across many disciplines. Design thinking calls for collaboration with a critical mass of individuals with unique mindsets and sets of skills – those who can approach the unknown with certainty and resolve, and develop new approaches and strategies. With them, legal teams can utilize design thinking to take on some of the biggest organizational challenges, such as how to drive artificial intelligence (AI) applications as part of their digital transformation. They can aspire to have CLOC’s 12 core competencies for legal operations, reaching new levels of maturity.

Learn More About Design Thinking and ContractPodAi

Want to learn to develop your own framework and best practices around the design thinking process? At CLOC 2020 Vegas Institute, ContractPodAi will lead an informative, 90-minute workshop session on this excitingly relevant topic. Join us at 3:30pm on the 12th May.

We will be joined by Hunter Simon, Vice-President of Business Affairs and General Counsel at Technicolor Production Services, the multinational media, communication and entertainment corporation. Together, we will discuss the need for outside-the-box thinking in order to solve problems; the ways to go about the design thinking process; and how exactly to leverage design thinking in order to implement – and drive the adoption of – brand-new systems.

The third annual CLOC London Institute kicked off on January 20th, 2020, at the Landmark Hotel, London. Over the course of two days, an energetic crowd of 430 attendees from 27 countries came together to CONNECT, LEARN, and COLLABORATE.

Legal Operations professionals from corporate teams and law firms filled the educational sessions and networked with legal vendors and service providers in the exhibit hall to exchange ideas, share information, learn about new services and technologies, and to challenge each other to reach new heights in 2021.

The structured meet-and-greets were fantastic opportunities to forge new partnerships and to rekindle existing ones. Members of the CLOC community also got together quite organically during the Institute to share dinner, or a cocktail, and built even stronger connections. These “Off the CLOC” social and business gatherings presented additional networking opportunities for participants, that will have a ripple effect throughout the year.

The Institute kicked off with opening remarks from Mary O’Carroll and me, followed by an always inspiring opening keynote by Dan Katz, who spoke on (yes, you guessed it) where legal technology and innovation has taken the industry over the last 10 years and his top predictions for the future.

Our goal for the Institute was to provide content that was tailored to the European legal ecosystem, while being practical and providing actions that could be implemented immediately. CLOC’s 2020 priorities seemed to resonate well across the community in Europe.

Here are a few key insights that I took away from London:

• Better Together: We are stronger as a connected community. In an ecosystem in a rapid state of evolution, everyone acknowledged that working in silos will hamper our ability to drive sustainable transformation. We need to work even more closely together to be successful. All boats rise with this collaborative approach, and we all become more invested in each other’s success when we work together to build solutions. Hearing the results of these types of collaborations will be a focus for CLOC London 2021!
• The CLOC Community is a Powerful Movement and Force for Good in the Industry. In an industry that is in a rapid state of transition, harnessing our collective ingenuity and diverse skills and thought will be an imperative for law firms and in-house teams that want to be agile, innovative and impactful to the clients and businesses they serve. We have the opportunity to leverage our collective power to drive positive change across the legal industry and create space for conversations on how we can make a difference. Let’s take on this challenge together!

• As GC roles evolve, Legal Ops is an Imperative Hire. Our panel of General Counsels leading the “General Counsel and their Legal Operations Lead” session demonstrated the powerful and strategic nature of the GC/Legal Ops Lead partnership and how working together, they are driving transformation and delivering value to the businesses they serve. Legal Operations Leads are now essential hires for GCs.
• Technology is an Enabler, Not a Silver Bullet. Technology implementations are still very challenging: user adoption and change management are still areas of underinvestment. Efforts to gain consensus on both the problem being solved and the potential products and services that will lead to better adoption of the selected solution is key. This will be another area of focus in 2021!
• The Proliferation of Legal-tech and Legal Services Providers is Overwhelming for In-House Teams. The new CLOC Legal Ops Directory is a good start in identifying all the vendors; however, this proliferation of vendors represents a more significant challenge for in-house Legal Ops teams . We would like to see more vendor consolidation within legal-tech. We need enterprise systems that work together seamlessly.
• This interoperability between systems will only be possible when vendors across the legal technology industry begin to collaborate to solve the problems challenging Legal Ops and their teams.
• Data is Power. Leveraging data and analytics to measure Legal Teams impact on the business is imperative in driving strategic decisions with business leaders and law firms. Many teams are struggling with access to easily consumable data due to multiple tools and integration challenges. Consolidated platform systems will help to access data and legal service providers can help with cleansing data and the human effort to build foundational dashboards to leverage predictive analytics capabilities.
• AI Needs HI. AI is still in the nascent stages with multiple tools solving unique use cases that need significant Human Intervention (HI). We need to see more vendor consolidation and collaborating in this space to reduce the heavy lift for in house teams. Legal service providers working with AI vendors can present better solutions to clients if they work together.

• Human Capital is Still Our Most Significant Asset! Are we doing enough to nurture and grow our Legal Leaders? The “Legal Leaders of the Future” session reminded us of the need to invest in our people and not leave anyone behind. This will require an intentional effort and investment in the development of resilience skills to prepare leaders for a more VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world. The CLOC community can help chart a new course for those in our community who feel rudderless and fearful of the changes ahead. Together, we can inspire confidence in our ability to operate successfully in a new future by sharing ideas and leveraging next-gen development programs.
• Progress, not Perfection, is Our Mantra. The Legal Ops Journey panel offered a fascinating insight into the different approaches each of the panellists took when prioritizing their initiatives in the first year of their roles. Progress, not perfection, is an essential mantra to adopt. Investments in change management initiatives are crucial to bringing people with you on the transformation journey.
• Law Firm Leaders Need to Solve Client Challenges. Law Firm COO and Innovation roles will help drive change, but in-house teams need to use their influence and buying power to invest in and reward innovative firms.

The 2020 London Institute was a great success in bringing our members together to Connect, Learn, and Collaborate. We are excited to begin planning the 2021 London Institute and hearing how the connections and collaborations forged this year have impacted each of you and your journeys as Legal Ops Leaders.

Mark your calendars for January 18-19, 2021. We’ll be meeting at the Grand Lancaster, London. See you there!

The pace of transformation in the legal services market continues to accelerate and we’re seeing a growing enthusiasm from in-house legal teams to embrace this change. There are a growing number of opportunities to develop skillsets and embrace alternative legal careers, as well as to be at the forefront of this evolution by driving change and encouraging genuine thought leadership. In this blog we focus on the people aspects, including how the pressure to upskill teams may affect individuals in different ways; the diversification and introduction of new roles and skills, and an increased focus on wellbeing.

The lawyer of the future: One size doesn’t fit all

‘Strategic’, ‘commercial’, ‘flexible’. According to in-house legal teams, these are the key attributes needed by the future lawyer to succeed. Are the days when lawyers were expected to know the law and only the law now in the past?

With many organisations aligning their legal teams to business areas, lawyers are under pressure to become more strategic and flexible; equipped to respond to queries across multiple legal disciplines and having the commercial knowledge to support this advice and provide tangible solutions. Add to this the need to consider legal tech within these solutions, provide thorough project management and become data literate, and you can see that the role of the in-house lawyer is under immense pressure to evolve. Many lawyers are embracing this challenge with enthusiasm, hungry to be learn new skills and discover alternative career pathways. Where though does this leave those lawyers who want to remain in a specialist position and don’t have the appetite to develop further skills? Is there still a place for them in the in-house legal team structure? We recently discussed this question with a group of clients, and the answer was a resounding yes. These people are in fact integral to the success of the legal team and we need to acknowledge the value they bring to the function. Whilst they may not wish to bring new skills to the table, they too can be part of this transformation solely by adapting their mindsets and becoming more inquisitive. By challenging the status quo, identifying alternative approaches to tasks and asking colleagues if certain tasks could be done more efficiently, they will add a huge amount to the legal transformation agenda.

Whichever ‘change bucket’ you’re in, the key is to appreciate the different perspectives each individual can bring, recognising that some may be more subtle than others.

From forming to storming: The changing role of the in-house legal team

The evolution of the in-house legal team is starting to gain pace and we are seeing new areas of expertise developing. The rise of the ‘legal operations’ role is a prime example; this is now a key senior role in many firms and does not necessarily have to be performed by someone with a legal background. Rather, business, financial and strategic skill sets are key to be able to identify opportunities to maximise value for money of external legal spend and deploying strategies to make efficiency and cost savings.

Given the demands on the in-house legal function to manage complex regulatory change projects, streamline high-volume legal processes as well as perform the role of the firm’s trusted legal expert and minimise risk, we are increasingly asked by our clients whether they should be looking to hire their own legal project managers or legal technology experts to support them. The answer to this is not clear cut. It depends on the size of the organisation and the appetite for keeping the work in-house rather than leveraging law firm’s expertise in these areas. Regardless of this, if you are considering it the first step is to fully engage with these roles and understand the value they would bring to your organisation, taking into account the behavioural change which would need to be adopted to ensure the full integration of the team.

Our view is that the in-house legal function’s transformation journey is, to quote Tuckman’s group development model (forming, storming, norming and performing), currently in the ‘forming’ stage where team members with differing skills will act independently of each other. To move to the next stage of maturity, ‘storming’ where the group start to work towards the common strategic goals will require people to embrace conflict and change in order to succeed. Actions speak louder than words: a refreshing approach to mental health.

Alongside the maturing landscape of the legal services market has come the recognition that the legal industry needs to be doing more around mental health. A leadership focus on this topic, and employee wellbeing more generally, has seen this become one of the key priorities this year. Two refreshing aspects which we have seen regularly are worthy of highlighting:

1. Pledges alone are not seen as enough. Operational and behavioural change need to align to deliver the improved outcomes underpinning those pledges; and

2. A movement away from sticking plaster solutions to the problems when they arise, and much more determination to address the root causes. We expect to see this remaining a key agenda topic in coming years ahead, with an increasingly strong focus both on leadership and actions, not just words.

All in all, this is an exciting time to be in the law! New career paths, brand new roles, and new opportunities for people with diverse skills. But what is clear is that traditional roles and legal expertise still very much have a central place in this broader NewLaw community, and integration and collaboration are key to the progression of the industry.

About Ashurt Advance

Ashurst Advance combines NewLaw expertise, a positive approach, collaborative working and thinking beyond the immediate deliverables, to help solve our clients’ business challenges and create value for our clients. We bring together the firm’s legal and industry experts, our process and technology capability, and a scalable range of cost-effective resourcing options in a fully integrated, managed and quality assured offering to deliver results which are aligned with our clients’ needs. Ashurst Advance has acted successfully for over 400 clients on nearly 1300 matters across 55 workstreams globally.

We would be delighted to have a chat with you at the London CLOC institute, so please do come and visit our booth situated in the Ballroom Hall.