What Law Firm BD Programs Get Wrong - And What It Means for Innovation Teams
A firm can commit real resources to a legal tech or innovation function and still end up with an initiative that stalls and cannot retain the people hired to lead it. The failure modes are the same as BD - and the talent market has already figured that out.
What Does a Director of Innovation at a Law Firm Actually Do?
Director of Innovation means something different at every law firm. At some firms it is a technology deployment role. At others it is closer to change management or knowledge management. At others it is a hybrid of all three. These are genuinely different jobs, and firms that write a single job description combining all three versions are the ones whose searches stall or produce the wrong result. This piece covers what the role actually requires, what the strongest candidates look like in practice, and why standard recruiting approaches consistently fail to find them.
How to Build a Knowledge Management Function That Actually Works
Law firms have spent significant money on knowledge management technology in the past five years. Most are not seeing the returns they expected. The problem is almost never the tool. It is the absence of a KM function capable of making the technology actually work. This piece covers the four structural layers every high-performing KM function requires, the hiring sequence that actually matters, and why deploying technology into an environment that was never built to support it is the most consistent reason KM investments underperform.
The Legal Tech Hiring Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
Law firms are competing for a very small group of people who have both technical fluency and real law firm experience. The internal pipeline most firms never built is now the one everyone is chasing, and the traditional recruiting approach is not going to close that gap.
Why Law Firm BD Hires Fail - and What to Do Differently
Law firms have invested more in business development talent over the past decade than at any point in the industry's history. A lot of those hires have not worked out. The failure rate is not a talent supply problem. It is a process problem. This piece covers the five most common BD hiring mistakes at law firms, from writing job descriptions that describe a fantasy candidate to using compensation benchmarks that are no longer competitive, and what a better hiring process actually looks like in practice.
Onward Insights - October 2025
The firms losing top candidates aren’t doing anything wrong - they’re just moving too slow. The real divide isn’t about effort; it’s about infrastructure. When traditional approval chains meet today’s lateral market speed, even well-meaning firms end up ghosting strong candidates.
We break down how one firm made a two-week close possible, what’s structurally blocking others from doing the same, and why treating recruiting as a strategic function - not a committee afterthought - is what separates firms that hire talent from those that just interview it.
Onward Insights - March 2025
🌱 New Month, Fresh Insights
The March edition of Onward Insights is live, and this one goes way beyond the offer letter.
We’re talking real retention, smarter transitions, and what law firms actually need to keep top talent engaged. Think: onboarding that works, career moves with strategy, and how AI is quietly (and not so quietly) shaking up the legal world.
If you’re building for the long run, whether you’re hiring or being hired, this one’s for you.
👉 Dive in. Let’s grow smarter, together.