In January 2020, I launched Version 1.03 of the Catalog of Law Firm Innovations, part of the Legal Services Innovation Index. Version 1.03 includes an additional 379 law firm innovations, bringing the total number of entries to 706. Northwestern Law students Alexander Crowley, Lauren Diner, Mona Kalantar, and Yoon Hoo Lee helped conduct the research for this version.
The goal of the Catalog is to “[i]dentify concrete examples of law firms offering products, legal services, or consulting services that constitute innovations in legal-service delivery or foster legal-service delivery innovations.” While we have employed systematic rigor to curate this information, the Catalog does not purport to be an exhaustive collection of all law firm innovations.
Version 1.03 includes innovations submitted through the form available on the Catalog page. Before adding these innovations to the Catalog, we verified the information, including the practice area and discipline driving the innovation. After making these additions, we reviewed prior entries, updating information where appropriate. We also removed six entries that had been added to version 1.02 after determining that they did not meet the Catalog criteria.
In addition to the submissions that we’ve received, we browsed the websites of the Global 100 (American Lawyer), Am Law 200 (American Lawyer), and Canadian top 30 law firms (Lexpert), looking for innovations that meet the Catalog criteria. Next, no matter what we found while browsing each law firm website, we completed specific Google searches for innovations at each individual firm.
After some experimentation, we settled on conducting two specific searches for each firm: “[firm name] innovation” and “[firm name] launch” (without any quotes). For each search, we reviewed the first five pages of results returned by Google and clicked on each result that appeared to lead to an innovation at the law firm that met the Catalog criteria. For each innovation that actually met the criteria, a team member confirmed the details on the law firm’s website and added the entry to the Catalog. A second team member reviewed each entry, including the designated discipline/tool, area of law, and description.
My team and I welcome feedback on how to improve this resource. We are currently working on improving the consistency of classifications and pruning entries that upon closer inspection do not satisfy the Catalog criteria.
If you know about a law firm innovation that is not included in the Catalog, please submit the innovation using the form available on the Catalog page. We will review your entry and include it in our next release.