OP-ED: Connecting Law, Entrepreneurship And Innovation

Last weekend I had the privilege of speaking at the National Open University during the Law Week Dinner of the University's Law society. While I had been nominated in view of my experience with intellectual property law, I was given a blank check to speak on any topic of my choosing. I used the opportunity to speak on a range of things that were within my areas of interest, in a way that was relevant to them. Below are some of the key insights I shared.

Let’s begin with some working definition of the key terms: 

• Law: A rule defining correct procedure or behavior for individuals, businesses, organizations and societies.

• Entrepreneurship:  The process of starting a business or other organization. The entrepreneur develops a business model, acquires the human and other required resources, and is fully responsible for its success or failure (Wikipedia).The entrepreneurial mindset is usually characterized by risk-taking and innovation.

• Innovation: A new method, idea or product; a new thing, or a new way of doing an old thing.

• The need for regulation to guide a business environment becoming increasingly complex

• The chance to enter new markets and industries with the evolution of new technology

• New ways of doing businesses and new regulations

• The power of new technology and social media to drive efficiency and reduce costs.

• Law Schools: There is a need to expand the scope of traditional legal knowledge and include entrepreneurship, innovation and even business strategy in their training program. This could be done through law clinics, online course partnerships or exchange programs - if we do not wish to disrupt the current curriculum

• Regulators: Need to understand the implication of policy on entrepreneurship and innovation and its ability to either stifle or stimulate it. Key to doing this would be to work with people at the core of the industry being regulated.

• Bar Associations: Need to boost the profile of the profession as still being relevant in an age of disruption; facilitate interaction between the bar and the business industries particularly those in new industries and markets.

• Courts: With the perennial problem of massive backlog of cases, in our courts and its impact on dispute resolution and access to justice, the judicial system really needs to review its case management systems. Some countries are already carrying out virtual hearings. 

• Legal Practitioners: Today’s lawyers need to have a little more than just law to offer their clients, they need to understand new processes and technologies; they are not just lawyers but consultants and problem solvers.

• Finally, regardless of what you do or who you are: Think legally, think entrepreneurially, think innovatively.

The Legal profession is known for its adherence to tradition and precedence, the need to keep doing it the way it has always been done. This kind of thinking is apparently antithetical to innovation and entrepreneurship. So what is the connection?

Technological innovation is affecting the way people do business; it is increasing the access people have to legal resources and impacting the way legal services are being rendered. Like virtually every other major industry, the legal marketplace is evolving. There is a rise in the number of online legal service providers, virtual law firms, legal process outsourcers and paralegals.

Other radical trends include publicly traded law firms and neo-firms with alternative business structures and mutli-disciplinary practices (like what we are trying to do at Adelphi). New ways to organize legal talent and sell its services are flourishing. This disruption provides both opportunities and threats to lawyers:

Opportunities include:

Threats to the legal profession include access to free legal information and forms on the internet, giving some clients the sense that they don’t need lawyers- in some circumstances, consumers seeking more affordable legal services and the takeover of non-litigation jobs by non-lawyers.

These circumstances may expose some of the current weaknesses of lawyers including limited knowledge of non-law disciplines and a tendency to be overly focused on our own industry methods. However, lawyers possess certain strengths which prepares them for disruptive innovation such as their training in business law, their involvement with businesses at the regulatory and creation phase as well as their capacity to create valuable intellectual property through IP Law.

In this time of great disruption and challenges to tradition and doing it the old way, it’s no longer a question of whether Lawyers should innovate but how? I have attempted to summarize my thoughts on this by directing it at lawyers along the legal services value chain as follows:

©Ese Oraka

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Ese Oraka is a Lawyer and Business Designer. He has extensive knowledge and experience in IP and Business Law, Innovation Management and Business Model Design. He is a founding partner at Adelphi Consulting. You can find him on - Twitter: @eseoraka, Facebook: /ese.oraka.9, or email info@adelphionline.com