There is a puzzle in the legal business. Our economic landscape is filling up with innovative organizations who have embraced the convergence of technology and business to meet new market demands, yet the legal market remains conservative.

This year at the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Annual Conference, there was increased chatter about research and development (R&D) labs and artificial intelligence (AI) for the legal industry.

Brian Kuhn, Watson Business Solutions executive for IBM, said AI is becoming common practice in many industries, especially in health care, which is embracing advancements and redefining delivery models to create new client offerings.

As is typical for the legal market, clients are driving change—particularly larger and more sophisticated consumers of legal services who have legal operations professionals streamlining corporate legal departments. Take for instance, Kimberly Bell, head of operations, legal/external affairs for Nissan Group of America, who uses lawyer robots to complete work typically performed by law firm associates. The cost to Nissan? $10,000 per year. This economical solution frees up time for associates to focus on higher level work and client-facing business efforts. And the entrepreneurial behavior helps to fuel Nissan's bottom line.

Even so, Kuhn warns that the broader legal industry is slower to adapt, and this delay will ultimately hurt our industry.

Let's define research and development in the business sense for a moment. R&D comes in many forms and it refers to activities that a business undertake in the hope of development of new or the improvement of current products, services and procedures.

Last year, total spending on R&D by the world's 1,000 largest companies was about $702 billion, according to the 2017 Global Innovation 1000 study. Typically, businesses outside of legal invest about 3.5 percent of their annual revenues on R&D.

While many forge ahead toward the increased use of AI, metrics and other analytical tools that enable job performance and increased production, the legal industry still has a ways to go to reshape how attorneys more creatively engage with each other and with clients.

Even if your law firm is disinclined to invest in a R&D department, an idea lab or design thinking, small improvements in everyday work life can add up to meaningful impact.

A culture that supports idea generation and awards its people, not just its partners, is almost always at an advantage. A few years ago, Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed held a firmwide competition to bring new ideas from every corner of the firm. The best ideas were selected out of that exercise and committees were created to develop those ideas further.

Another way to focus on R&D is to allow, and reward, space and time to explore and study market trends. Business development and knowledge management professionals can collaborate on research to identify niche markets and hyper-specialties so that attorneys can establish themselves as market leaders in a specific space. The new findings may be added or tweaked in practice groups to better serve clients.

Additionally, holding conversations with clients about their challenges and barriers they need to overcome also generates innovation inside law firms. These types of activities change the traditional law firm talent model to a solutions-oriented law firm model.

Encouragingly, the 2018 LMA/Bloomberg Law research survey reported the rise of newer specialties such as practice management, process improvement, pricing, competitive intelligence and technology. Additionally, we are hearing about new titles like chief pricing officers, client experience managers, futurists and so on.

Change is difficult, especially in the legal market. Yet a firm's willingness to think differently reflects its ability to adapt, to ensure sustainability for itself, and to help solve that industrywide puzzle.

Ioana Good is the immediate past president of the Legal Marketing Association for the Southeast Region, and this year she is leading the R&D arm for the organization. She manages business development and communications for Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed. Contact her at [email protected].

Kathryn B. Whitaker is a member of the Legal Marketing Association board of directors, and director of marketing & business development at McNair Law Firm. She can be reached at [email protected].