THE Government’s recent White Paper on the reform of legal services repeatedly calls for greater innovation in law firms; but it says little about IT (www.dca.gov.uk/legalsys/lsreform.htm). Is it anticipated that English lawyers should follow the apparent indifference that leading US law firms exhibit towards IT that directly helps clients and consumers? With the exception of Davis Polk & Wardwell (www.dpw.com), few leading US practices are renowned in Europe for being technologically innovative. Generally, the leading firms have resisted serious investment beyond their own back offices. They have often rejected knowledge systems and document-assembly systems, for example, even though these can actually enhance or simplify client service.

Why? In short, there has been little incentive to do otherwise. It is not easy to convince a group of millionaires within clear sight of retirement that their business model is wrong and that they should change direction and embrace new technologies. The top US law firms are hugely and satisfyingly profitable. Accordingly, they seem to be moved to change more by the threat of competitive disadvantage than by the promise of competitive advantage. Without hunger for change, without the worry of being left behind by the competition and, vitally, without clients clamouring for new forms of service, it will be business as usual for the US legal behemoths for many years yet. They will wring every last cent out of the increasingly unsustainable practice of hourly billing and will steer well clear of innovative IT.

HISTORICALLY, UK law firms have a much stronger track record in technological innovation that benefits clients. The market has been more competitive in Britain than in the US and there has been much stronger demand from clients. But how is innovation achieved here? Management textbooks might suggest that these innovations will have flowed elegantly from the insights of management consultants, from lengthy strategy documents, from market research and from away-days devoted to blue-sky, out-of-the-box and lateral thinking. Not a bit of it. The reality is that the overwhelming number of innovations (often documented in this column) have evolved from the efforts of mavericks within law firms — energetic, often eccentric, frequently marginalised, invariably demanding, single-minded individuals who pursue ideas that are regarded in the early days as peripheral, irrelevant and even wasteful. But the mavericks persevere and in their dining-rooms or studies at home they beaver away, creating new forms of service for clients. Gradually, their innovations came to be recognised as significant and even client-winning. And soon, everyone claims that the mavericks had the firm’s full support from the outset. A new discipline thus emerges — maverick management. This is the art of nurturing and encouraging mavericks, giving them space to innovate and wrapping some strategy and structure around their innovations only once their ideas have fully gestated. Mavericks are the research and development departments of many law firms.

CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN’S seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma is strongly recommended to lawyers interested in technological innovation (www.hbsp.harvard.edu). Here, they will learn why some law firms will fail in future — by recognising too late the significance of “disruptive technologies”. Frightening but prescient.

The author lectures and consults internationally. He is IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Honorary Professor at Gresham College. He can be contacted through www.susskind.com

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