What To Do After Deciding To Make Your Firm Tech Savvy

How to find the technology and AI path

You have watched a movie with this plot line. The protagonist is in a tough spot. She can stay where she is, but that means almost certain death. She can choose to move forward, but she has to choose a path and there are many. Her friends give her advice and she stresses over the problem. Finally, just when we think our protagonist will fail, her mentor swoops in to save the day. She follows the mentor’s advice, chooses a path, and we fade to happy ending.

Hollywood has used this plot in hundreds of movies. The mentor could be alive or a memory from the past. The paths may look alike or present the classic good-bad choice. The protagonist must experience a personal struggle to get to her revelation. The reason Hollywood likes this plot is because it works. That’s entertainment.

In real life, we sometimes find ourselves cast as the protagonists in these stories. The challenge we face is the new world of technology and the even newer world of artificial intelligence. Many lawyers and law firms are accepting, some even embracing, the fact that staying analog will not work in an increasingly digital world. They have made the first critical decision in the story: they will not stay in one place, they will move forward.

Now, they are faced with the choice — how to get from where they are to the future. This is an interesting part of many stories. In some, the choice is not what the future will bring but which of many current places to go. What is the path to happiness among known choices? In other stories, the protagonist must guess the future. What is the path to the future, an unknown? This second path is the one involving technology, artificial intelligence, and law.

Now that we know the protagonist, we must cast the mentor. I am going to grab the role, for two very good reasons. First, I have sufficient gray hair. Whenever casting calls, it is important to have the right look. Second, I claim lineage rights. My mentors (sensei) were Yoshiki Iwata and Chihiro Nakao, both famous in the lean thinking community (both founders of Shingijutsu Co., Ltd.). They were proteges of Taiichi Ohno, considered the father of the Toyota Production System (the genesis of lean thinking).

Sensei Iwata is center-left in the light gray suit. Sensei Nakao is center-right in the dark suit. I was the Team Leader and am in the second row, centered between them wearing the purple tie.

What does lean thinking have to do with the path to the future using technology and AI? Quite a bit, actually.

Bridging People To Technology

Your organization has committed to technology and AI. You have the people to take you on your journey. While you do not know the exact destination, you know it involves technology and AI. None of us know where this path will take us. But, we do know we can learn along the way, we can adapt what we learn to our circumstances, and we will be much better off using technology and AI than fighting it.

What we need is a bridge. That bridge is process, forming the trilogy you have heard many times: people, process and technology. And that brings us to lean thinking.

Lean thinking — and I include its descendants design thinking and scrum project management — has received decades of attention across all industries in all areas of the world. I am a gardener, and yesterday I stumbled across a video where the narrator and farmer discussed a “new and different” approach to farming. The approach they described came right out of a lean thinking playbook (though they apparently did not know it).

Let me give you a few ideas of how lean thinking — process thinking — is essential to the technology and AI journey:

1. Bond Firm and Clients. Legal services cross boundaries. The lawyer must work cooperatively with the client. Thus, the processes cross boundaries. By working as a team, lawyer and client can create workflows that use the unique capabilities of each partner. Technology and AI, integrated into this cross-boundary workflow, opens doors to data collection, risk prevention, and competitive advantage (see below).
2. Remove Constraints. Processes are bounded by constraints, and technology and AI can remove constraints. Simple example: I can improve the process you use to handwrite a document, but word processing will exceed what I can do with process improvement. Technology removed the physical constraint imposed by your body. Your technology and AI programs should focus (not exclusively) on your constraints. Process understanding helps you identify those constraints and integrate technology and AI into the new process.
3. Create Value. You may have heard someone say lean thinking creates value. What they mean is that lean thinking removes (or prevents) waste, making value easier to find and see. But, if we add in design thinking, then we can say our lean-design approach can create value. Technology and AI can add to that value. A value creation engine exceeds an approach that uses technology and AI as task-avoidance tools.
4. Develop Competitive Advantages. Clients want lower costs and they (as in-house lawyers) want to demonstrate value. We can combine these wish-list items and say they want to provide their organizations with competitive advantages. By combining our understanding of process with technology and AI, we can integrate law into products and services, reducing risk, cost, and at the same time adding value to those products or services. The in-house law department adds value through the competitive advantage it provides the organization.

Notice that I said nothing about cutting costs. If you use lean thinking properly, you should see lower costs. Any time your do something that removes waste or prevents it from entering a system, costs will be lower. Lower costs are a good thing, but you can achieve so much more with lean thinking it is a shame to settle for a cost cutting perspective.

The Path Most Likely To Succeed

Deciding to become a tech savvy firm was an important step. You want that step to be followed by many others and to take the path most likely to succeed. Bolt on AI projects, the flavor of the year technology tricks, and late night TV tech gimmicks abound. Most of them are solutions searching for a problem. Don’t fall prey to the late night hucksters.

Use your commitment to a technology and AI-augmented practice to solve client problems along with your problems. Incorporate process thinking into your plans. And, don’t forget the people. It may be trite to say, but the key to finding the right path is still people, process, and technology.

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About: Ken is a speaker and author on innovation, leadership, and on the future of people, process, and technology. On Medium, he is a “Top 50” author on innovation, leadership, and artificial intelligence. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, and follow him on Facebook.