Is it really ok for lawyers to fail?
February 22, 2017
general counsel flexible working innovation legal project management lpm in-house lawyers
Great insight from Vicky Sandry, General Counsel at Sky.
I felt a little unsure even writing the above title and using the word ‘fail’ in conjunction with legal services. We are there to serve and protect and if we fail we often feel there will be catastrophic consequences to our clients and our personal reputation, but life is all about learning from perceived failures.
We learn to walk by falling down many times until we are strong enough to balance, and in the legal context trying different approaches to find solutions to problems is the equivalent. Managed failure/risk is what we are good at. So long as we manage the downside we should be fearless in our attempts at improving our profession and our work. Enjoy reading this interview with Vicky.
It’s a bit of a generalisation, but I think lawyers are not naturally inclined to be highly innovative risk-takers. I was having an interesting discussion recently about the extent to which it’s OK for lawyers to fail. Trying and failing is an established part of the process of innovation, for example in start-up businesses. But is it really ok for lawyers to fail? It’s an interesting question because if it’s not ok to fail, then we might be more reluctant to innovate in the way we do things – for fear of it going wrong.
http://www.halebury.com/latest-blogs/the-in-house-experience-i..
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