Change in legal. Age dependent or attitude dependent?
There’s a myth that digital natives will embrace technology and veteran practitioners will resist it.
Reality is more nuanced.
I’ve met senior lawyers who are restless innovators, hungry to try new fee models, new ways of partnering with outside counsel, new ways to measure value.
I’ve also met brilliant young lawyers who prefer the comfort of the familiar, wary that new tools might disrupt the routine (and the money) they’ve just mastered.
Turns out age is a directional proxy at best, and a poor one at that.
Why does this matter? Because the pressures on in‑house teams and law firms are not easing, especially as AI continues its ascent in the legal world. Clients expect innovation that translates to speed and demonstrable value. Conversations I’ve had with GCs over the past 12 months have shifted from uncertainty around AI to how are my firms using AI and where will I see the savings from it?
Check out the graph on the growing role of AI in law firm evaluation that we’re seeing on PERSUIT.
Innovation, especially with gen AI, is happening all around you – and accelerating. In that environment, staying the same is not neutral; it’s choosing to fall behind.
Organizations that thrive will continuously learn, test, and adapt. In a rapidly evolving world, you need change agents to navigate your business.
Behaviors, not resumés
How do you find change agents?
- They are curious by nature.
- They ask “why” before they accept “how.”
- They seek data before they defend a habit.
- They volunteer for pilots.
- They invite feedback from clients - even when it stings.
- They collaborate across functions.
- They’re comfortable saying “I don’t know, yet.”
If you’re hiring, interview for this. Ask candidates to describe a time they unlearned a familiar way of working. Probe for how they measured success. Ask what they read outside of law. Listen for curiosity, humility, and energy.
Genuine curiosity and comfort with change are now what I look for when interviewing. I’ve shifted from looking for ‘has this person done this before?’ to ‘what is this person capable of, given the mindset that they bring?’
Technical skills are the price of admission; a growth mindset is the multiplier.
How do you develop change agents?
Fostering an environment for change agents is easier than you think:
- Create small, safe experiments. Big change invites big resistance. Pick a matter type, a region, or a team. Define a clear hypothesis (“We can save 20% on legal fees if we scope matters up front and invite competitive proposals”), a simple metric, and a short runway. Then run the sprint, measure, learn, and iterate.
- Pair across generations and disciplines. Reverse‑mentoring is powerful: match a senior subject‑matter expert with a tech‑savvy junior, each teaching the other. The message is that learning flows both ways, and status comes from contribution, not from years served.
- Praise in public. Tell the story of the team that tried a new template, a new intake process, or a new briefing format—and what happened. Celebrate the learning even when the result was mixed. Visibility is fuel.
- Remove friction. Nothing kills enthusiasm faster than clunky access, fuzzy governance, or unclear decisions. Make it easy to test something new. Give your change agents permission to spend time on it. Protect them from death by committee.
How do you promote them?
Put your change agents on visible matters. Give them the microphone at your town halls. Build a small guild of champions across practice areas who meet monthly to compare notes and cross‑pollinate ideas.
Align incentives so that adoption and learning are recognized in performance discussions, not treated as extracurricular.
And what about the rest?
Not everyone will become a pioneer, and that’s fine. But everyone must be willing to come along. Set a clear standard: we try, we learn, we improve. Make the “why” about client impact and professional pride, not just internal efficiency. Be honest that opting out is not an option.
As leaders, our job is to model this. Admit when an old assumption was wrong. Share data, not just directives. Choose progress over perfection. When you consistently do that, the culture shifts. The skeptics may not become evangelists, but they will respect momentum—and many will join it.
Choose change
Change comes about through chance, choice or crisis.
With AI scrambling the legal industry and driving a value reckoning, this is your chance to make the right choice and equip your team with the right mix of innovators to get ahead of the curve and avoid a crisis.
When you do, remember age is a number. Attitude moves the needle.
Cheers,
-Jim
This post first appeared in The Value Standard, a bi-weekly newsletter dedicated to helping enterprise legal leaders advance in the new marketplace for legal. Join 5,000+ senior legal leaders who get The Value Standard delivered directly to their inbox.
