Note: This article originally appeared on nationalmagazine.ca.
Len Brody is no futurist. He made that point clear during his keynote presentation to the CBA Legal Conference in Calgary on Saturday.
If someone calls himself a futurist, stop listening to him, said Brody, the founder of five startups and counting. It’s only really possible to see 720 days into the future, he said.
But that being said, he was pretty clear on what needs to be the future of the legal profession: planned self-destruction.
He calls it the rise of the parallel enterprise: he says firms should invest 10 per cent of their time, energy, money and resources into a parallel enterprise whose business is to put the parent out of business.
He used as an example the founder of Match.com, the world’s leading dating site – that guy put millions into the project of putting Match.com out of business. That parallel enterprise came up with Tinder.
If people in your enterprise are coming up with ways of putting you out of business, they’re finding ways to make you better at what you do. They’re coming up with better processes, better procedures, better ways of serving customers (which he says is also key to survival – he predicts the rise of the six-figure customer service representative, which will make some customer service representatives happy).
So there you go. Figure out a way to put yourself out of business and ensure your continued relevance in it.
PracticeLink editor Kim Covert blogs for nationalmagazine.ca