Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the key research findings from the Law Society’s FLIP Stream collaboration with UNSW Law were presented to more than 320 members of the profession via webinar last week. The 2019 FLIP Stream topic, “Change leadership and management for a dynamic legal profession”, could not be more relevant for lawyers right now.

As we heard at the webinar, change comes in many shapes and sizes, sometimes incremental and hardly noticed, but sometimes large and dramatic.

I think we can all agree COVID-19 belongs to the latter category.

Whether lawyers like or are good at change, they have been through a lot of it, particularly this year. And as was pointed out during the webinar, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced change that would have taken a lot longer to come about. Even when the pandemic is controlled, our justice system is unlikely to go back to the way it was pre-coronavirus.

So, in the current climate, understanding how to manage change – whether transformational or crisis-driven, planned or emergent – is even more vital. How do we bring in innovations that address real problems faced by the profession? How, in the process, can we create a change-ready culture where lawyers are interested in, and ready and rewarded for those changes?

These were some of the key issues Dr Justine Rogers and Dr Felicity Bell explored when they interviewed change leaders from across the legal profession for the FLIP Stream research.

As Drs Rogers and Bell found, “For organisations to be successful, they need to change. They need to generate new ideas, grow, renew, and change; this requires the capacity to quickly respond to novel problems or situations in the environment. They need to question fundamental assumptions about how things are done (and thought about). They need to engage in continuous learning and improvement”.

The Change Leadership Primer, which is now available on the Law Society website, provides an in-depth exploration of the research conducted by the FLIP Stream team and will serve as a valuable resource to help legal practitioners thrive as ‘change leaders’.  Its objective is to empower practitioners by providing an in-depth understanding of who lawyers are as ‘change recipients’, along with a framework and set of strategies for the profession to set their own visions for change and to pursue them effectively.

For those who missed the webinar, you can register now to view it on demand.

In 2020, the FLIP Stream researchers will turn their attention to a new topic: “The sustainability of law and lawyers.”

Richard Harvey, President, Law Society of NSW

< Go back