Packed with creative insights
and practical advice
Browsing Month June, 2011
Reinventing the British Monarchy?
June 29th, 2011 → 11:45 am @ Ari Kaplan
There is a great line in this article – Make Prince Harry Our King, Say Canadian Monarchists – from yesterday’s Telegraph highlighting that the Royal Family is “an institution that knows how to reinvent itself.” Perhaps that recurring reinvention is the result of incremental innovations that have created a legacy of adaptation.
Feel free to watch my discussion on this trend with Michael McKiernan of Canada’s Law Times:
The Optimistic Professional
June 28th, 2011 → 9:08 am @ Ari Kaplan
Omar Ha-Redeye generously interviewed me back in the summer of 2008 for Lawiscool.com following the release of my first book, The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008). We finally had the opportunity to meet in person during the Toronto stop on the BigHand reinvention tour for Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace (Wiley, 2011) and this time I asked him a few questions given his prominent role in the Canadian legal community. He shares his refreshing optimism below in this excerpt from our discussion:
Freedom v. Money – Building Efficiency with Independence
June 24th, 2011 → 1:24 pm @ Ari Kaplan
Interesting piece on Yahoo! Finance – Freedom More Important to Well-Being Than Money – about a recent study by Ronald Fischer and Diana Boer of Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology called: What Is More Important for National Well-Being: Money or Autonomy? A Meta-Analysis of Well-Being, Burnout, and Anxiety Across 63 Societies.
They found that on a national level, individualism and autonomy are more important to well-being than money. As you are evaluating your personal reinvention, or the reinvention of your staff members and colleagues, consider how you can incorporate more autonomy.
Countries scoring high in autonomy had less stress, less burnout, less mental health problems and so on.
Ronald Fischer School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, NZ
Empowering Female Professionals
June 20th, 2011 → 8:21 pm @ Ari Kaplan
The National Law Journal recently reported that the Women in Law Empowerment Forum released its initial list of law firms that have successfully integrated women in top leadership positions and compensated them appropriately enough to qualify for its highest certification level. WILEF invited over 300 firms with 100 or more attorneys to apply for the honor, but only 32 met the criteria. Karen Sloan’s excellent article appears in: It’s certified: These Firms Empower Women.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Cynthia Pladziewicz, Esq., who blogs at Professional Development Perspectives, during the BigHand reinvention tour stop in Dallas recently. She generously shared her insights on the transformation of women’s initiatives.
Legal practice 2.0: encouraging an entrepreneurial approach
June 17th, 2011 → 7:18 pm @ Ari Kaplan
I was in Minneapolis earlier this week on day 9 of the BigHand reinvention tour and had the opportunity to stop at the Lawyerist headquarters in a beautiful part of town. Founder and editor-in-chief, Sam Glover, shared his thoughts on the future of legal practice.
Learning About Reinvention from Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks
June 13th, 2011 → 8:54 pm @ Ari Kaplan
I am not a basketball fan, but I can appreciate the reinvention of the Dallas Mavericks and the team’s star, Dirk Nowitzki. I thought this column and video about Nowitzki’s emotional exit from the game with a second or so left was very telling about loss, redemption and the convergence of both.
I will be continuing the BigHand reinvention tour in Chicago and Minneapolis this week, followed by Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles next week. Let me know what you think of this video from my visit to the office of the Texas Lawyer in Dallas on Friday.
Reinvention from the Top
June 9th, 2011 → 4:25 pm @ Ari Kaplan
In this week’s National Law Journal, Kent Gardiner, Chairman of Crowell & Moring, published an insightful article called – Firms Need to Reinvent Relationships with Clients. He sums up the challenge that law firms are facing with:
Clients increasingly view legal services as just another commodity, and are pressing their firms to provide those services cheaply and efficiently.
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Having generally suffered far worse than their law firms in terms of budget cuts, layoffs and reduced earnings, clients have made clear that ever rising billing rates, inefficiencies in the delivery of legal services and other misalignment of interests between law firm and client will no longer be tolerated.
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The real challenge — the mountain rising before us — is to entirely reinvent our relationship with clients.
Among the solutions he proposes are:
- Developing a deep and current understanding of a client’s business needs.
- Utilizing success-based pricing.
He concludes that:
…firms that invest heavily in reinventing their client service will forge new relationships, get the best work and be paid well for delivering extraordinary value.
As I have now been in six cities (NYC, Washington, DC, Boston, Charlotte, Philadelphia and Houston) on the Reinvention Tour with BigHand, Inc., supported by Philips, Nuance, kCura, FTI, Kiersted Systems, WestlawNext, and Fios, I am engaging in a similar conversation with law firm leaders nationwide as we discuss the issue of Reinventing Professional Services. Gardiner artfully characterizes the challenges and his article encourages further discussion on this topic.
Perspectives on Reinvention
June 6th, 2011 → 8:30 pm @ admin
At my core, I am a conversation starter and I hope that my new book encourages a series of discussions about reinvention in various industries. My goal has always been to engage others in a dialogue and learn from their insights. This blog will serve to share those lessons. I had the great privilege of speaking with leaders from AON Hewitt, Avvo, Axiom, BlackRock, Cozen O’Connor, Craigslist, Disney, Eden McCallum, Expedia, FMC Technologies, Greenberg Traurig, HARO, JP Morgan Chase & Co., LinkedIn, Marcum LLP, MD Anderson Cancer Center, MF Global, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi, RocketLawyer, Royal Veterinary College, Texas Children’s Hospital, Yahoo!, Zillow and others for Reinventing Professional Services. I have also been raising the topic of reinvention on my North American tour sponsored by BigHand, Inc.
Here is what Ed Walters, CEO and Co-Founder of Fastcase had to say when we spoke in Washington, DC on June 2, 2011. He suggests that each of us ask: What Does Your New Normal Look Like?
“After the economic downturn, we’re seeing a reboot,” says Walters. He highlights that we are in a period following hard decisions and cuts, when industry leaders are trying to figure out what their “new normal” looks like. He notes that law firms in particular are beginning “a very large exercise in reinvention.”