Smart Strategy

Recent news and awards indicate law firms are increasing their investments in innovation. Stories of recently launched innovation committees, R&D teams and idea labs routinely grace the pages of industry publications. Yet despite these investments, the trajectory of the industry as a whole seems to have remained largely unchanged. Why are innovation efforts by larger law firms failing to make a meaningful impact?

The emphasis of the majority of innovation efforts in today's law firms is on idea generation— bringing together smart people to catalog all of the ways in which the firm can respond to changes. While idea generation is vital, it lacks the impact of taking action. Corporate entities as noteworthy as Disney, Ogilvy, Microsoft and Coca Cola have shuttered their innovation labs in recent years. Why? They simply don't work. In fact, according to a CapGemini report from 2015, an expert predicted 90 percent of innovation labs fail.