This is a live blog post from ReInvent Law NYC. Lisa Damon of Seyfarth Lean is the speaker. [Posted in real time, forgive typos, inaccuracies.)
“I love to blow things up, the bigger the better.” What does legal innovation have to do with pyrotechnics? Let me explain. Dealing with 11 year old boy who wants to go to a pyrotechnic convention. Mom and son go. Lots of explosions, debris falling from sky. Expecting lots of safety rules and measures. But only one rule: wear safety goggles.
Once I put on my safety glasses, I realize I’m safe. All the scary explosions now felt great. What does a 12 cent piece of glass do? It lets you experience. Makes it safe to be passionate.
So how can we release passion in legal innovation? At Seyfarth, innovation started with a sparkler. We put on goggles. It was ok to do it wrong. We made a lot of mistakes. The safety glasses protected us. You need the safety glasses to make the fireworks go off.
With the safety glasses, you can do wild things. Jeff Carr asked us to JV with other law firms. Seemed terrible first but we are doing it now and it’s great. Developed collaborative software to enable multiple parties to work together.
We designed an iPad app for trademark protection for Ken Wolverine. With our safety glasses on, we were safe, we had the passion.
The passion fuels LPM, innovative staffing, tech innovations. It’s all about the safety glasses. Taking multi-variate data to help clients – we had the safetys on. We are meeting with the Watson guys. Different partnerships globals. With safety glasses on, you can do all kinds of cool things, letting people follow their passion.
Think of being on rather than in a law firm. Think of the firm as a platform to launch great pyrotechnics.