Legal Education: a New Growth Vision Part Ii-the Groundwork: Building a Customer Satisfying Innovation Ecosystem

• Publication year: 2021
• Citation: Vol. 97

97 Nebraska L. Rev. 985. Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part II-The Groundwork: Building a Customer Satisfying Innovation Ecosystem

Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part II-The Groundwork: Building a Customer Satisfying Innovation Ecosystem

Hilary G. Escajeda(fn*)

ABSTRACT

Financial sustainability awaits agile, future-focused legal education programs that deliver students with market-valued, cost-effective, and omni-channel knowledge and skills development solutions.

Shifting from an atom-based, traditional law school mindset to a platform-based, human-artificial intelligence (AI) integrated education system requires vision, planning, and drive. Bold and determined leaders will invent the future of legal education. To do this, they will (1) edit the law school's DNA to focus on delivering customer satisfactions (2) build vibrant multidisciplinary ecosystems focused on cultivating modern education services, (3) embrace emerging digital technologies, and (4) seize new marketplace opportunities to diversify revenue streams-thereby enhancing program solvency and relevance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction: Satisfied Customers Key to Sustainable Growth ............................................... 937

II. Assessing the Law School Landscape .................. 940

III. Getting Back to the Basics ............................ 945
A. Customer-Focused Program Reinvention ........... 946
1. What Is Your Business? ....................... 946
2. Who Are Your Customers? ..................... 948

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3. What Do Your Customers Want? ............... 950
4. What Is Value and How Do You Add Value? ... 953
B. Physical and Digital Convergence of Education ..... 958
C. Friction Audits and Resolving "Pain Points" ........ 960
1. Friction Audit: Students ....................... 963
2. Friction Audit: Employers, Practitioners, and Community Professionals ...................... 966
D. Modernizing Legal Education to Deliver Customer Satisfactions ...................................... 967

IV. Building an Innovation Ecosystem ..................... 970
A. Ecosystems: An Explainer ......................... 972
B. Theories of Innovation ............................. 974
1. Recombinant (Combinatorial) Innovation ....... 977
2. Disruptive Innovation ......................... 978
3. Value Innovation .............................. 980
4. Open Innovation ............................... 983
5. Breakthrough/Revolutionary Versus Incremental/Evolutionary Innovations .......... 986
C. Innovation in the Digital Age ...................... 991
1. Bits, Atoms, and Moore's Law .................. 992
2. Information Over Instinct ...................... 995
3. Agile and Lean Startup Methodologies ......... 1001
4. Basic Tools: Prototypes and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)............................... 1008
D. Resistance to Innovation .......................... 1012
E. Innovation Triumvirate: Visionary, Thinker-planner, and Driver ........................................ 1016

V. Conclusions ........................................... 1018

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SERIES OVERVIEW

In this second installment of the three-part Legal Education: A New Growth Vision series, this Article builds on the premise set forth in Part I, that the legal education industry faces a strategic inflection point (SIP) and must embrace the forces of creative destruction to survive in a constantly evolving marketplace. To counter the downward gravitational pulls of SIPs, forward-focused, innovative programs will embrace platforms and work toward human-artificial intelligence (AI) integration-thereby deflecting the downward trajectory.

This Article begins with a survey of an eroding law school landscape. To curb this erosion, it recommends that law schools focus on the basics, including: resolving customer friction points, delivering customer satisfactions, and modernizing education services by embracing the convergence of physical and digital education. This installment elaborates on these ideas and emphasizes some building blocks of an innovative, multidisciplinary ecosystem. It then examines resistance to these changes and introduces the importance of leadership when driving forward into the future.

The third and final installment published immediately following this Article marks a path forward and includes sample plans for human-AI convergence. Part III also includes Appendices I-III.

I. INTRODUCTION: SATISFIED CUSTOMERS KEY TO SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.

-Alan Kay, Computer Scientist(fn1)

In his book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Martin Ford argues that higher education has "so far, been highly resistant to the kind of disruption that is already becoming evident in the broader economy."(fn2) As discussed in Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part I, creative destruction indiscriminately upsets and disorganizes enterprises of all sizes.(fn3) This means that organizations will confront both creative destruction and strategic inflection points (SIPs) over their lifetimes. Andrew S.

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Grove, former Intel CEO, explains that an SIP "is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change" and involves the "perilous transition between the old and new ways of doing business."(fn4) When responding to SIPs, survival-oriented leaders understand the nexus between change, innovation, and growth-a world in which "only the paranoid survive."(fn5)

Change is hard, but it can be managed. Change requires new thinking, models, and approaches. Change begins with a clear-eyed assessment of the current facts and circumstances. It then progresses from the innovative attitudes and actions of survival-oriented leaders. Like the visionary Intel leadership team, future-focused law school entrepreneurs will respond nimbly to evolving customer needs and changing market conditions by creating and supporting high functioning innovation ecosystems. As such, these modern legal education programs will consistently scout and seize new revenue opportunities, thereby attaining financial sustainability.(fn6)

This three-part series relies on enterprise sustainability to inform its recommendations and asserts that innovation provides the smartest, strongest, and safest path forward. Ultimately, long-term law school solvency will turn on whether the program can reimagine its education service portfolio and reinvent its offerings, while simultaneously concentrating energies on the delivery of customer value and satisfaction. By focusing on customer satisfactions for a full spectrum of legal education consumers, law schools can identify opportunities, capture market share, and resolve customer friction points. Further, fixating on the delivery of customer satisfactions can (1) create education service opportunities that yield positive spillover effects for law student instruction, (2) develop diversified revenue streams from new service offerings, and (3) renew institutional relevance in an

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increasingly global and digital world. Smart, survival-oriented law schools will invent the future.

This Article, Part II of Legal Education: A New Growth Vision, lays the groundwork for building customer-oriented education ecosystems. Part I of this Article begins with an assessment of the current legal education landscape. Part II then focuses on the basics as a starting point to deliver customer-centric knowledge and skills development services. Finally, Part III introduces several innovation theories and provides an examination of human resistance to change. Part III then ends with a brief study of the legendary Intel leadership team as an example of how successful innovation requires a triumvirate consisting of a visionary, thinker-planner, and driver who work together to make the once "impossible possible."(fn7)

Because innovative business strategies, models, and theories exhibit seasons of growth, bloom, and decay,(fn8) this Article offers a variety of perspectives to help prepare and amend the organizational soil for future "seed ideas" to germinate.(fn9) Just as some seeds bear bountiful harvests and others multiply into noxious weeds, education leaders must take action to shape institutional strategies and prevent root-bound, traditional mindsets from stifling innovation and adaptation.

To propagate and prune programs that will thrive in the human-digital age, education leaders must continually analyze, feed, and trim innovation strategies through variegated feedback comprised of empirical testing, customer interactions,(fn10) employee insights, and mar-

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ketplace realities.(fn11) Therefore, the models, processes, and theories described herein should be evaluated individually according to the specific needs, context, and connections of the community.(fn12)

II. ASSESSING THE LAW SCHOOL LANDSCAPE

After considering myriad factors, Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part I concluded that the legal education industry faces an SIP and argued that education service and business model innovation provide fruitful paths for future sustainability. Part I used a wide lens to snapshot the landscape and then articulate the issues presented. This Part II narrows the focus by offering ideas and processes that will prepare and amend the soil for change at individual law schools. Because change requires a frank assessment of the current landscape before taking action, four...