Leading in the Digital Age

• Author: Adam Newhouse
• Pages: 149-163

149

CHAPTER 15

Leading in the Digital Age

Much basic legal research can now be done by English-speaking

lawyers in other parts of the world. Likewise, software and Web

sites . . . have eliminated the monopoly lawyers once had on

certain specialized information. So which lawyers will remain?

Those whocan empathize with their clients and understand their

true needs. Those who can sit in a negotiation and figure out the

subtext of the discussion that’s coursing beneath the explicit words.

And those who can look at a jury, read their expressions, and

instantly know whether they’re making a persuasive case. Those

empathic abilities have always been important to lawyers—but now

they’ve become the key point of differentiation in this and other

professions.384

—Daniel H. Pink

Saying that being a “good” lawyer does not automatically confer a lead-

ership status introduces a more profound problem. Some traditional

lawyers may be ill-suited to act as leaders. As the theories of “leader-

ship paradox” or “paradox of power” explain, individuals who arrive

at a position of power driven by self-interest; the allure of financial

rewards, fame, or glory; or hunger for power, admiration, or status are

totally unqualified to lead because of those very qualities that brought

them there in the first place.385

What then are the ideal traits of digital leaders whose very presence

instinctively moves people to team up with them in the era of the Inter-

net? Certainly it’s not their technical excellence—this has always been

taken for granted. What distinguishes Digital Lawyer leaders is not

what they know; it’s their attitude.

384. Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future 165

(Riverhead Books 2006).

385. Rhode, Lawyers as Leaders (Oxford) (cited in note 373) at 5.

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