Seize The Future Conference Helps Lawyers Reinvent
Themselves for the 21st Century

By Dr. John W. Olmstead, Jr., MBA

On November 4-6 1999 I attended the "Seize the Future" conference sponsored by the ABA Law Practice Section and Lotus Development Corporation in Phoenix, Arizona.

The conference was nothing short of outstanding. We were taken on a trip into the future with notable speakers such as Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, and John Landry serving as our tour guides.The trip was a real eye-opener for all of us. Virtually everyone acknowledged the need for major changes if the legal profession is to stay in the driver’s seat and embrace change rather than falling victim to it.

During the course of just two short days, the group of conference participants gathered to hear leading-edge thinkers on the future events that will shape the legal profession, to exchange ideas with other opinion leaders, and to establish relationships with others who are also prominently positioned to truly influence the future of the legal profession.

Participants attending this invitation only conference included managing partners from some of the world’s leading law firms, prominent sole practitioners, general counsel, deans of law schools, bar leaders, notable judges, and law firm management consultants.

The main purpose of the conference was to provide thought-provoking discussion and tools which will help all members of the legal profession develop the leadership skills needed to "reinvent the profession" and take full advantage of the cultural, technological and business trends that will shape the future of the legal profession.

Day One: Tom Peters

On the first day we got off on a rocking start with Tom Peters presenting a wake up call for the profession. Tom is a well known management consultant, writer and speaker. He is best known for his books such as In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence, Liberation Management, and The Circle of Innovation. Peters started his presentation by stating "none of us have been around for a transformation like this (since the printing press) and I don’t know if we are up to it." According to Peters, we are in the middle of the biggest change since the cave man began bartering. In essence we are facing a once in every 10,000 year change. Some of his specific comments and quotes from his presentation included:

• Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.
• It is generally easier to kill an organization than to change it.
• This is the age of talent.
• The web will wipe out 80-90% of car dealers in the next 10-12 years and there will be no profit margin in what is left.
• According to Business Week we are moving toward silicon life which will subjugate humanity by 2050, and the human brain has only a short time left as the smartest thing on earth.
• We are in an IT/white collar revolution. 90% of white collar jobs such as legal, accounting, consulting will disappear or be radically transformed within the next 10 years.
• Innovations such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Internet, Extranet, Intranet, and Groupware are causing an assault on white collar workers
• Every individual will become Brand You.
• Within a dozen years it will not be uncommon for a company to book billions of revenue with just a few employees.
• We should reward excellent failures and punish medicore successes.
• You do not really want to be the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.
• Our business needs a massive transfusion of talent and talent is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
• New associate attorneys hired by law firms must have flaws.
• Normal people do normal things. Don’t use a cookie cutter approach to recruiting people. Look for diversity.
• Within the next 10-15 years the legal profession will be reinvented.
• Creativity comes from stuff that does not fit comfortably together.
• Tommorow is here - e-commerce.
• This is the age of self service. We have become a do it yourself nation.
• We may be in the last 20 years of human domination of the world.
• MDP (multi-disciplinary practice) is not an issue. It is the only way you can do anything in 1999 and beyond.
• Boundaries of everything are blurring.
• MDP does not mean people are on your payroll.
• Your goal should be infinite reach and not a single sole on your payroll.
• Temps are more valuable than permanent employees.
• Loyal means spiritless.
• It is a fabulous time to be a lawyer because we will have to reinvent the rules.

In a closing question and answer session, Peters outlined the following priorities for attending law firms for the next six months:

1. Reorient the law firm hiring process. Hire 100% freaks that have flaws. Employees with flaws stimulate new ideas, solutions and creativity. People without flaws result in status quo solutions. Look for people with unusual experiences and from diverse backgrounds.
2. Systematically stomp out mediocre successes. Review all client relationships. "I would rather work in a 15 attorney firm doing cool work than a 300 attorney firm doing un-cool work." Size stinks.
3. Make the internet your best friend and do it through total independent staffing. Pay top dollar. Tell them to put us out of business.
4. Hang out with 18 year olds. We have to call students teachers and teachers students.
5. Don’t believe we can’t do self-service law practice.

Everyone was stunned after the Tom Peters’ presentation. A survey of participants revealed that a majority believed in the picture of the future outlined by Peters.

Immedialtely following Tom Peters presentation panelists discussed practical implications concerning incorporating innovation into the legal profession. The panel was moderated by Peter Bishop, Studies of the Future, University of Houston at Clear Lake, Texas; Melinda J. Brown, Lotus Development Corporation; and Charles F. Robinson; Law Office of Charles F. Robinson presented their respective views regarding reinventing the legal profession. These included:

• Facing up to competition from CPAs and financial service firms, web portals, and in house law departments.
• The best lawyers don’t just focus on the legal problem.
• Leveraging technology.
• Technology is more than just e-mail. At Lotus there are no secretaries. Clients can get documents electronically.
• We will see the demise of the legal secretary, fax machine, printed newsletter and messenger.
• MDP is not the question. The question is are we willing to reinvent ourselves to service 21st century clients.
• We need to provide high theatre for clients.

After an excellent networking luncheon, John Landry, Strategic Technology Consultant, IBM Corporation, gave an outstanding presentation on business transformation in a networked economy. Landry stated that "it is the business that changes because of technology." We have entered the global/digital marketplace. The impact of the internet and e-commerce is that the cost of searching for products and the price of those products is going down. The greatest risks are commodization and disintermediation of distribution channels for both products and services. The new IT driver is the wired customer. By the end of the year PC penetration rates of 60% are expected in American homes. We will see a blending of the TV set and the net. Next year telephones will have web access. A 1.4 trillion dollar economy is projected on the internet by 2003. In essence, e-commerce is driving a revolutionary change. Prices are falling and barriers to entry disappear. The internet is creating new market opportunity. Business firms must complicate their products. Frequently, information services are bundled around the product (e-bundling). The end result of technology and networks is a power shift from supplier to customer on a global scale. New rules are being written for competing in a networked global marketplace. Law firms will have to modify their strategies for identifying opportunities and dealing with competition in this new electronic marketplace.

The next segment of the program "Innovation Through Technology: Taking Organizations into the Next Millenium" was presented by Seth Earley, President, Earley & Associates Inc., and Michael W. Harnish, Dickinson Wright PLLC. Earley stated that "electronic workflow is the forklift in the white collar world." It involves the movement of data and information from one location to another. The law firms needs to be connected and imbedded in the client’s processes. According to Earley the key issues become how do to deal with commoditized transactions and how do you tie yourself to the client. Law firms are 10-15 years behind the CPA profession in this area. In the future barriers between firms based on size will no longer be relevant. Bandwidth will change the way that law is practiced. Globalization is defined as "the man without a country." A real life example of a workflow system integrated with client processes was presented by Michael Harnish featuring the Lotus based system used at the Dickinson Wright law firm in Detroit.

Day Two: Gary Hamel

After a wonderful evening reception and dinner the next day was set in motion. While the objective of the first day was to create a sense of urgency for change and upset our equilibrium, the objective of the second day was to provide us with tools to effect change and deal with this new business environment. The first speaker was Dr. Gary Hamel, who was called "the world’s reigning strategy guru" by Economist magazine. Peter Senge has referred to him as "the most influential thinker on strategy in the Western world." He has authored such concepts as strategic intent, core competence, corporate imagination, strategic architecture, and industry foresight. His books include "Competing for the Future" and "Alliance Advantage." Hamel’s presentation entitled "The Strategic Frame of Reference for Creating Your Future" was a real treat--fast paced and energetic, humorous, and innovative.

According to Hamel, we are reaching the end of the age of progress. Our institutions are not ready for the new world. This is the "age of revolution." Change is no longer moving in a linear fashion. Change is moving at an exponential rate and is being driven by the internet, data storage technology, deregulation, world population, genetic coding, capital flow, and bandwidth. While businesses are trying to come to grips with this new world, the legal industry is struggling to embrace issues of the industrial area. Specific comments by Dr. Hamel include:

• Heritage is no longer destiny. We can change history.
• Dreams are doorways to new realities.
• We are entering a new industrial order
• Incumbency has never been worth less.
• It is a great time to be hungry and aggressive.
• Industrial companies are losing the battle for talent. 25% of Harvard Business School graduates are going to work for firms with less than 50 employees.
• Don’t worry about the how - worry about the what.
• In a nonlinear world only nonlinear works. Different vs. Better.
• We need big new radical ideas.
• In the medical field they have let payors drive them to the future. What happens when a profession get out of the drivers seat?
• We must get in front of the change curve.
• How is the legal profession going to change to take advantage of a rapidly changing world?

Hamel’s theme revolves around the need to formulate a point of view without which someone else is in the driver’s seat. A point of view is created by building foresight according to the following model suggested by Hamel:

1. Listen to the revolutionaries. Change does not start from the top.
2. Challenge orthodoxies.
3. Exploit discontinuities.
4. Unleash core competencies.
5. Work the customer backwards by focusing on customer needs first.
6. Find a cause for the legal profession and yourself that you truly believe in.
7. Experiment with new ideas and solutions in a test environment prior to rolling them out on a large scale. Experimentation allows us to fail and thereby explore new ideas and approaches to problems.

Hamel concluded by saying that you can’t reinvent who you are unless you have a cause. Then you must have the courage to forget. Forgetting is harder then learning.

After Hamel’s presentation we were off to a town hall meeting which was held to integrate Dr. Hamel’s ideas into the legal profession. The discussion was facilitated by Mark Powers, Managing Partner of Atticus and Mark M. Maraia, Mark M. Maraia Associates. Both facilitators are experienced coaches that facilitate change programs in law firms. Suggestions were provided on how coaching programs can be implemented that help institutionalize the change process and achieve measurable results.

After lunch our speaker, Roberta Katz, author of Justice Matters gave a presentation on "Creating a New System of Justice for the 21st Century." Specific problem areas for reform were presented and discussed.

Our next session was "How the Profession Can Seize the Future - A Model" which was presented by Barry Melancon, president of the AICPA. Melancon presented an overview of the Visioning 2000 program adopted by the AICPA for the accounting profession in which they invested $20 million to chart their future.Melancon identified the following as the top 5 service areas for CPAs:

• Assurance and information integrity - professional services.
• Technology
• Consulting
• Financial planning
• International services

He outlined the process that was used by the AICPA to move such a process forward in a conservative professional service profession such as public accounting.

The last session of the day was "How to Use Outside Agents to Help You Sustain the Change Process" presented by Mark Powers and Mark M. Maraia. The use of outside coaches as facilitators was presented and a model for effective use was highlighted.

The conference was educational, fun, and we met many new friends. We take our hats off to the ABA Law Practice Management Section and Lotus Development Corporation for organizing such an event, which is much needed as the profession deals with reinventing itself in order to effectively function in the new world order. The challenge now rests with the participants as they go back to the trenches of the real world. Can these individuals act as opinion leaders and help launch the cultural revolution that is needed in the profession?

 

Dr. John W. Olmstead, Jr., MBA, is a Certified Professional Consultant to Management and the President of Olmstead & Associates, Legal Management Consultants, St. Louis, MO. The firm provides organizational performance, management, leadership development, and marketing advisory services to law and other professional service firms. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lawyers Competitive Edge: The Journal of Law Office Economics and Management, West Group. He may be contacted by e-mail at jolmstead@olmsteadassoc.com.

 

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