I recently read an article about law firm innovation promising that by hiring a chief innovation officer (otherwise known as a CINO) a law firm could go so far as to spark delight in the clients by innovating its practice. That really got my attention. Somehow, delight is not a reaction I even remotely expect when thinking about the possible range of reactions from clients. We as lawyers often feel so burdened by our work that we can barely spark delight in ourselves.

The point of the article is that we as a profession so have to change to keep pace with innovations undertaken by our business clients that we have to change in order to survive in the future. We have heard this same constant drumbeat for years from our brothers and sisters who study the future of the legal profession. We also know that lawyers are stodgy and risk-averse. That is the nature of our training; we either prepare clients for the worst, like what is going to happen when the other party breaches the contract, or we deal with the fallout of the worst possible scenario that the client should have anticipated but didn’t. Innovation is risky—not in our playbook.

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