What does it take to thrive in today’s knowledge economy? If you read commentary from the legal industry, the answer is clear: innovation. This buzzword is alluring because it’s amorphous, ambiguous, ill-defined, and unmeasured. We can reward ourselves for “doing something,” while doing nothing at all.  If we can’t agree on a definition or direction, we can continue talking without taking any action.

It may feel good to encourage spontaneity and creativity, but random acts of innovation don’t work on a large scale. To be successful, innovation must be strategically executed and aligned to business strategies.  However, most companies fail to unite innovation and strategic initiatives.  PwC surveyed 1,200 executives about managing innovation and found that 54% struggled to connect innovation and business strategy.

When it comes to efforts to improve legal service delivery, we tend to look outward. We consider how we should re-engineer processes; how we can better staff projects; and what technology we should use. We rarely stop to think about how we should improve ourselves.

Lawyers are struggling to embrace change and this is impeding innovation. Even for those who want to change, most efforts fail to deliver.  How can we put in so much effort for so little gain?  Maybe it’s because we’re not identifying the right problems to solve.

Our approach to technology and process improvement initiatives is often fueled by hope, driven by shame, and made urgent by fearful hype.

Despite the calls to innovate and excitement stemming from conferences, hack-a-thons, think-pieces, and podcasts, law firms aren’t actually innovating. As lawyers, we know that we need to change, but figuring out how and where to start is daunting. Frankly, we’re stuck. And we’re not helped by the hype and assertions that one single idea or one single piece of technology will be the panacea for our problems. The truth is that no one change or decision will be the right fit for every law firm or law department. Instead, what we need is a framework to determine the best direction for our individual circumstances. Workflow analysis can help.

Too many lawyers with great ideas that could improve legal practice are discouraged from even trying to innovate. As lawyers, we assume that innovation must mean invention, technology, and programming. By accepting that assumption, we are accepting the belief that innovation is something that other people do. But that’s not true. Innovation can be any new process or new way of thinking — and that can be game changing. Innovating is for lawyers, and lawyers already have the skills to be innovators. No coding necessary.

Technologists seem mystified that lawyers don’t embrace efficiency-enhancing innovations. Despite our reluctance to face it, as lawyers, we need look no further than our rewards structure to see why. Billable hours reward inefficiency. And that rewards structure has remained in place with the help of ethical fading. We think that we’re simply using the existing business model for our benefit. We use our history and familiarity with the billable hour framework to ignore that our goals and our clients’ goals are at cross-purposes.

One mistake, possibly more than any other, is the reason behind so many failed legal technology purchases. And law firm management and software vendors are equally to blame: they both treat the purchasing decision as the end goal. The result is a landscape littered with failed technology and innovation initiatives that is bad for management and vendors alike.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since the financial crisis of 2008, yet the legal industry is still reeling from it. Lawyers felt the shift from seller’s market to buyer’s market, but we weren’t sure that it would be permanent and didn’t know how to respond. For technology enthusiasts, the answer seemed obvious: use more legal technology. That may be part of the solution (and I genuinely believe it is). However, the way technologists promote their tools is self-defeating. Early adopters encourage them, and together they create an echo chamber that is unattractive and unappealing to the vast majority of our profession.