To kick off, a reminder that the #BIOBG (“Be ignited, or be gone.”) theme for 2022 is radical collaboration. Seems important and appropriate to start by defining the term and offering some context for why we should be igniting around radical collaboration now. And while my focus is on the legal profession, I offer these ideas as relevant to anyone who seeks to make change that creates value.
I first began thinking in terms of “radical” collaboration when I encountered the term as a human-centered design mindset used by Stanford’s d.school. It appears in this 2007 “operator’s handbook” for the d.school and describes the goal of fostering “radical collaboration students, faculty, & industry partners.”
My thinking around collaboration, and what makes it radical, has expanded as I’ve explored research around teamwork, innovation, and cognitive diversity. And while I certainly embrace radical collaboration in the context of my work at Vanderbilt, I recognize that its power and value extend far beyond how we “do” collaboration in the classroom.
expanding collaboration and making it radical
At its essence, collaboration is two or more people working together to achieve a common goal or with a common purpose. What makes it radical depends on the context. In the context of the legal profession, I propose that collaboration in and of itself is radical for a host of reasons readily observable. Picking one to start: we don’t train lawyers to be collaborative. We train them to be competitive, having designed pedagogical methods that reward individual accomplishment, often completely devoid of meaningful opportunities to work with others to achieve learning goals.1
The individualistic mindset, instilled in law school, becomes enshrined in many legal professional environments that once again reward individual accomplishments over collaborative efforts (e.g. the “hotel for lawyers” model).
So, true collaboration in and of itself is a radical way for lawyers to move through the world, starting in law school and extending into the legal profession.
The irony? Our individualism directly contradicts our ethical obligations. I assert that lawyers have an ethical obligation to operate in radically collaborative ways if we aim to serve clients competently in an increasingly complex and increasingly global environment, i.e. the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Underlying radical collaboration in a broader sense is an understanding that led the d.school to enshrine it as a foundational mindset: that we get more and better ideas when we bring together cognitively-diverse problem solvers.2 In higher education, this can be as simple as bringing in industry partners to work with students and cross-disciplinary faculty, thus creating collaborative combinations whose cognitive superpower is greater than the sum of its parts.
In law, this can take many forms. For instance, here’s an interesting example I discovered recently: a law firm owned by lawyers and data scientists.3 Radical collaboration also heavily influences and informs the most interesting work happening in the “alternative” legal services space, where we see companies designing teams with diverse skillsets (e.g. legal + tech + data) to comprehensively address corporate clients’ needs. Which is leading to captive ALSPs within law firms that mimic the formula.4
And, radical collaboration is more than just cognitive diversity. As much as we need people who are trained to solve problems in different ways around the table, we need people with different life experiences and different cultural contexts around the table. True radical collaboration is inherently diverse and inclusive. It forces us out of our “functional bias” (a preference for working with those who think and express themselves in ways similar to one’s self) mindset.5
so how might we define radical collaboration?
Returning to the seedbed of the phrase, let’s look to human-centered design (HCD) to fashion a robust working definition of radical collaboration.
Collaboration is radical when we bring a range of stakeholders into the room and around the table to work on solutions to a problem.
Collaboration is radical when we use a range of problem-solving methods to work on solutions to a problem.
Collaboration is radical when we seek feedback from a range of stakeholders on the solutions we propose. And act on that feedback.
Collaboration is radical when we engage in iteration and constant experimentation (based on feedback) to arrive at the best solution possible.
In the legal profession, collaboration by and large is none of these things. Yet.
Radical collaboration is about bringing intentional diversity to both who does the work and how it is done.
we learn to radically collaborate by . . . collaborating radically
A final point on this first installment on radical collaboration: we learn to do it by doing it. I endeavor to live this as someone who is helping to prepare the next generation of legal profession leaders. I do it by creating collaborative opportunities with and among my student colleagues. I do it by collaborating with experts in other fields like data science to create cross-disciplinary courses.6 I do it by actively seeking out others who want to experiment and create in radically collaborative ways.7
How can YOU develop the mindset and adopt the tools of radical collaboration? What does that look like in your work? How might we design experiments in radical collaboration, that we can all learn and grow from?
We’ll explore answers to these questions, and many more, in future posts. And feel free to start sharing ideas now. That’s what the comments are for. 👇
- Cat
2 February 2022
Nearly all students who take my courses have had no meaningful collaborative experience in the law school curriculum outside of clinical experiences (which are limited so not everyone has this opportunity). And in those instances of extra-curricular collaboration (e.g. journals, moot court, etc.), there is no intentional training or focus on how the collaboration happens. While most clinical experiences require collaboration they don’t teach collaboration techniques transparently. This leads to very mixed experiences and the clear loss of opportunities to teach students how to collaborate in effective ways.
“Cognitive diversity has been defined as differences in perspective or information processing styles.” See “Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse” (Harvard Busines Review, 2017)
“We are the only law firm in the world that is jointly run by lawyers and data scientists, focused on helping our clients avoid, detect and respond to the liabilities of AI and analytics. We are based in Washington, DC, the first place in the United States to allow lawyers and nonlawyers to co-own law firms.” BNH.AI website
See Alternative Legal Services Providers 2021 (Thomson Reuters): “Some law firms have responded to the threat of ALSPs by creating competitive services using ALSP models, often within a captive organization.”
See “Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse” (Harvard Busines Review, 2017)
The most recent example: Data in Law Practice
If you do, too? Reach out to me!