1 Introduction

Welcome to a time of exponential change, the most amazing time ever to be alive.

This is how Peter H. Diamandis, Co-Founder of the Singularity University, opens his foreword to the inspiring book “Exponential Organizations”.¹ Reading this line, the well-conditioned managerial mind immediately gravitates to “change” and then to the many concepts around change management.

Why “exponential” ? In the regular course of events, professions that interact in (or with) corporate environments are being gradually shaped by two forces: first, by their own drive which they develop dependent on the creativity, innovation and ambition of the leaders within the organization and, second, by external forces that voice a new demand or pose a new challenge to which the profession needs to react. There are, however, moments of non-linear disruption. By disruption I mean a pressure to change that pushes beyond the foreseeable next step of improving current state. I mean forces that do so with unsettling power and speed, making leaders realize that the current path will inevitably lead to destruction and that it is therefore unavoidable to pave a new way by taking steps into the unknown. This is where legal is: the speed of transformation is too fast, the change too profound in order to address it with mere improvement of today's state. It is the time when only true innovation will provide adequate answers.

Susskind and Susskind conclude: “There is a strong sense that the professions, as currently organized, are approaching the end of an era...” ^{[211] [212] They then provide us with the four fundamental characteristics of what they call the end of the professional era:}

• “...

• the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers;

• a shift from a reactive approach to professional work; and

• the more-for-less challenge.”^[213]

It is baffling how well this analysis connects to every single article in this book; but it is not surprising, if we map the four characteristics provided by Susskind and Susskind to what we all can see happening in our industry:

(i) rapidly growing opportunities for standardization and automation;

(ii) commonly and ever more easily accessible legal knowledge;

(iii) a push for a proactive and more constructive (“business”) approach of legal; and

(iv) the questioning of the size of legal budgets and the expectation to decrease them.

Why is that then an “amazing” time, i.e. something positive? Change—specifi­cally at fast pace—will inevitably create angst, rejection and frustration when it comes about. It is human nature and there is no reason to challenge the unsettling effect that change has on organizations and individuals. The current inflection point that the legal industry has reached, however, has a different and much more fundamental make up. We are not just facing ordinary change, e.g. a new structure, a new application, a new process, reacting to budget cuts or whatever else one might typically subsume under “change”. We are facing the destruction of traditional boundaries in our profession! This means that the legal industry offers significant opportunity for both, for us leaders in terms of refining our vision and strategy, and also for our teams in terms of what the future work environment and mode of working will look like.

The disruption opens enormous opportunity for the creation of new types of jobs, career options and fully blown business opportunities for service providers, as new tools and skills are being added to the traditional role of a lawyer. Amazing? I believe so! If we just take the example of what decomposing our work and finding better ways to get the “repetitive and boring stuff” done will do to job satisfaction; or if we consider the opportunity for us as leaders to lead our teams to break free from a mostly self-referential legal system^[214] and to start working in a business frame of reference.

Legal—in whatever role—will be put much more directly and profoundly into a business frame of mind. Rightfully so, as this is the main point of reference in the professional world. When we recently were invited to present the key theses of this book at an international conference, during the lively discussion a senior colleague raised the concern that by the continuous push on legal to become a business function, we needed to watch out for not losing track of the core element of legal—in whatever role, i.e. being the guardian of legality. This is an important plea, indeed. Thus, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to add two important points of calibration. One as to what we do not mean and one as to what we do mean by Liquid Legal:

First, Liquid Legal is not meant to be a call for any role in legal to abandon its fundamental function of being an element of the system of law and justice in society at large and business in particular; this is and remains a crucial aspect to the role of a lawyer—specifically in times of change. “Compliance and protecting our organizations against risk, as true stewards do, have always been and will remain the core tasks of legal,... The law is the law, and we have to observe it. Period. That core remains stable.”^[215]

Second, Liquid Legal is, however, a call for any role in legal to embrace even stronger the intrinsic capability which we bring to the table and which is more relevant today, than ever before: to create trust! “By providing security, fostering trust and enabling people to work together, law is both, an expression and a fundamental driver of human civilization... Just like the heart pumps blood through physical organisms, legal, by establishing fair and transparent rules among people, departments, lines of businesses, divisions and subsidiaries, can carry trust through business organisms.”^[216]

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