The definition of legal innovation should be: “Legal innovation is a change in legal practice that enables lawyers to deliver better value to their clients.” It`s as simple as that. If it doesn`t add value to your customers, then it`s not innovative! So what is value? We have seen that research in different disciplines looks at the broader phenomenon of innovation and tries to decipher what the incentives for innovation are and to evaluate the results of innovation. We will now examine whether the general characteristics of the phenomenon of innovation also exist in the field of law. 48% of lawyers consider this to be the biggest challenge. Innovation requires the creation of dedicated teams, external but influenced by senior management. Without dedicated resources, teams naturally feel interested in day-to-day work, deprioritizing the role of innovation in this process. Nevertheless, throughout human history, legal innovations have also emerged in land law. The development of the trust, for example, attributed to the innovative creativity of the Equity Court in England, was an innovative idea with a profound and diverse impact. Its development lasted several centuries and followed the advent of the Islamic Waqf centuries earlier.67 At some point, it moved away from the realm of land law and was incorporated into corporate law.68 Let`s not forget that the industry is full of opportunities.
While the legal market is extremely mature, we`ve seen the most disruptive law firms and general counsel exploit and roll out new products and services every year. No matter the location or the field of law, the legal industry is hungry for new content and innovation. Creating a solid foundation for legal innovation is a matter of where to invest. While investing in technology is critical to ensuring the right tools are in place, investing in people is just as important. People drive innovation, and there are several steps you can take today to leverage that investment. For example, “innovation” is a term sometimes held hostage by people with ulterior motives. Take service providers who use the word in their shtick marketing. They can be quick to criticize as “non-innovative” those who do not hire them. This kind of cynicism creates confusion. Technological progress and the economic success it brings to innovators have made technological innovation an object of admiration. Law supports and regulates technological and creative innovation in other areas, but is law itself an area of innovation – legal innovation? Do the concepts, teachings, theories and techniques produced by law encompass innovation? If so, does legal innovation have characteristics similar to those of other types of innovation? Can we learn more about the nature of legal innovation in the broader field of innovation research? The legal discipline is more concerned with identifying innovations in other fields than with analyzing the characteristics of its own innovations.
In this essay, I argue that legal innovation has similar characteristics to innovation in other areas, although it is no less impressive and influential. The phenomenon of legal innovation can and should attract more attention from scientists. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th edition) defines the verb innovate as follows: “. introduce novelties; Make changes in… And from there, we can derive definitions of innovation (noun), innovation (adjective), etc. But if we put the word legal in front of one of these words, what should they mean? The development of innovation is accelerating, especially in technological fields. As a result, research on the phenomenon of innovation has evolved to examine the causes and effects of innovation and to find ways to improve it. Innovations in different fields often have similar characteristics. Innovation is not necessarily the result of a sudden flash, but the result of a prolonged process. In many cases, it stems from a real need for solutions and usually encounters fears of change. 62. Duffy, op.
cit. cit., note 4, p. 3 and 4 (offers a similar analysis of the sources of legal innovation). 12. Jan Fagerberg, Innovation: A Guide to the Literature, in The Oxford Handbook of Innovation 1, 4 (Jan Fagerberg, David C. Mowery & Richard R. Nelson eds. 2006) (Defining innovation as the “first attempt to implement an idea in reality”). Another innovative development in the field of land law has been the formulation of co-ownership law. This innovation arose from the process of urbanization that has characterized Europe and America since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution82 and has since spread throughout the world.
Urbanization has brought strangers closer to urban condominiums for residential or settlement purposes.83 The new social need led to a legal innovation that gave rise to a new branch of land law: condominium law.84 Legal innovation in this area has also lagged behind by decades or even centuries. compared to the actual development of condominiums.