THE LAW FIRM AS A LEARNING ORGANIZATION.

AuthorBeese, Mark

Twenty-five years ago, management guru Peter Senge wrote: "The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition." These words are no less true today and are imperative for law firms.

We often connect learning with the acquisition of knowledge. Lawyers (and law firms) have knowledge collection covered. We're pretty good at learning substantive stuff that applies to the practice of law and serving our clients. In fact, people and companies historically pay us a lot of money because we're good at knowing the right things at the right time. But consider learning as the acquisition of new skills for dealing with a changing environment. How are we doing in that context? Are we nimble, able to shift priorities and strategies to meet changing market realities?

We need to learn to:

* Understand our clients' business in a more intimate and complex manner so that we can provide custom services that meet their needs.

* See opportunity among the chaos to help clients with emerging and dynamic issues.

* Redesign legal service delivery systems and price them according to how the client perceives value.

* Conduct research to develop new services that meet the current and future needs of clients.

* Lead our groups, departments and firms with confidence and competency to develop efficient teams, both internally and with our clients.

Obstacles to Learning

Recent science on how the brain works and how we learn give us clues about how we can be more efficient and effective learners, both as individuals and organizations.

Carol Dweck, a Stanford University researcher, gave a challenging test to two groups of middle school students. After the test, one group was told: "You all did very well. You must be very smart." The other group was told: "You all did very well. You must have worked very hard." Then both groups were given a chance to take a second challenging test. Guess which group was more likely to accept the challenge? The group that was told they worked hard.

Why do you think this is? In her book, "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," Dweck explains that those of us who have a "fixed mindset" believe that being smart and successful is in the hardwiring. In other words, they believe that the potential of a person is fixed. The first group of students were less likely to take on additional challenges because they were afraid that an additional test might show that they are not as smart (or...

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