In this insightful interview, Jana Blount, Partner and Lead Designer at Treehouse Innovation, shares valuable perspectives on innovation in the legal industry. She emphasises that innovation can have different meanings for different players in the sector, ranging from disruptive transformation to incremental improvements in existing processes and technology utilisation.
Jana acknowledges that while industries like finance and insurance have undergone changes, a truly seismic shift in the legal sector has yet to be seen, despite the ongoing discussions around technologies like AI. She encourages a client-centric and people-focused approach, where emerging technologies are utilised to create tangible changes that benefit customers. Jana also challenges the idea of maintaining the status quo, urging legal professionals to be active participants in shaping the future landscape rather than passive observers of change.
Merlin Beyts: Innovation can mean a lot of things. How would you define it in relation to the legal industry?
Jana Blount: I think everybody in the legal sector will have a different definition of innovation, which is right, as we shouldn’t all be focusing on the same thing. I don’t think everybody should be trying to be disruptive or trying to transform the legal industry. I think certainly there should be people creating radical change in the space, but then others should be more focused on expanding their thinking about what they’re currently doing and how they might do that more effectively or deliver more value. For example, by utilising a new technology. So I don’t think that there’s an overarching definition for the entire industry because there are so many different players who will have a variety of different strategies, and that’s the way it should be.
Merlin Beyts: We’ve seen industries such as finance and insurance go through huge changes in the last decade. Do you think that changes happening in the legal sector will be as seismic?
Jana Blount: For me, if you look at finance and insurance, I don’t think changes have been seismic as yet, as I’m not seeing that much difference in what’s being offered to customers, so I think there’s still a lot of potential for things to change in a positive, customer-centric way. And I would hope that the same will be true for the legal sector. We’ve been talking about AI for years, but it hasn’t yet led to a full, seismic shift in the way things are done. I would like to see the industry become more client-centric and people-focused so that we can think in a constructive way about how we can utilise these new emerging technologies in a way that actually creates a shift that people will feel, rather than just using technology to change what we do already, as to me, unless we do that, the shift is not seismic.
Merlin Beyts: There’s a lot of denial about the changes taking place for both in-house legal teams and law firms. What would you say to someone who thinks that the status quo is here to stay?
Jana Blount: Change will be happening – it is already. For some people, they will be thinking about how to limit the impact, and for others, they will be thinking about how to thrive in the next 5-10 years. It’s not only technology that is changing. Work culture, economics, and world policies are all greatly shifting our worlds. My hope is that more lawyers, or people in the legal industry, decide to be active participants in shaping the new landscapes rather than viewing themselves as passive subjects of a change occurring to them. Lawyers by trade are trained in problem solving and utilising their sense of judgement and ethics in creating solutions, which is what we currently need more than ever!
Read the full LegalTech Diaries Volume 4: https://www.legaltech-talk.com/legaltechdiaries/volume-4/
