Legal Commentary

Do you collab-o-storm?

By Patrick J. Lamb

Do you brainstorm?  Do you invite everyone to participate?  Do you welcome all ideas before you start analyzing them?

At Valorem, we have regular collab-o-storms™.   The brainchild of Nicole Auerbach, these are the meetings where we gather as much of the team as is available and brainstorm about a particular problem, try to figure out a better strategy or whatever.  No idea is a  bad idea.  The one thing that seems to happen with great regularity is that somebody feeds off another idea and comes up with something new and better.  Hence the colloboration part of the title.

Here's why this has been so valuable.  Most legal times are hierarchical, and people, including senior people in hierarchies, tend to fall in love with their own arguments or ideas.  In the absence of an open forum like this, the senior person's ideas tend to win by default.  While that might be okay most of the time, we've seen first hand how most ideas can be improved upon through this process. 

Great concept.  Provides great value.  And everyone enjoys it.  It's not about debating points or being right.  It's about finding the best ideas, the best approach, the best solutions.  Very dialectic in nature. 

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on March 17, 2011 (boomark / email).