Can law schools teach creativity? Is improving lawyers’ ability to engage in creative problem solving a useful strategy for improving lawyer effectiveness? Can the legal profession, and the law schools that educate its members, engage with the threats they face from those outlets that are offering technology-enhanced, commoditized legal services and/or outsourced services? These are just some of the questions I attempt to address in a new article I am publishing with the Albany Law Review, “Law and Social Innovation,” which is now available for download here. In it, I explore these and other questions, using Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future as a starting point and foil for the discussion. Here is a representative passage:
A legal education in the 21st century should not just prepare law students to practice law in the present environment, it must prepare them to work with technology in creative ways that helps those students practice in the rapidly changing market for legal services. This will require them to embrace technology as a means of delivering legal services in a competent and efficient way, compete with non-traditional providers, and distinguish themselves from non-traditional providers by offering a superior product that satisfies clients’ instrumental as well as non-material needs.
Check it out if you get a moment. Thoughts/reactions welcome.
the Future of Change 
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