Today's big story in BUSINESS WEEK is, no surprise, innovation. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen refers to organizations which innovate as "the 'disrupters' of the economy." BUSINESS WEEK journalist Dean Foust adds that those organizations "change the rules of engagement."
Question: If more law firms were public corporations would they be on the BUSINESSWEEK 50 list of innovators? You bet. And they often do this by very old-fashioned, low-tech principles like extreme hard work and paying obsessive attention to the facts of the case.
On the plaintiff side is Marler Clark Law Firm which specializes in food-borne diseases. Partner Bill Marler is saluted and criticized for his digital outreach, which has helped Marler Clark "own" this market. But that's not why Marler Clark has become a powerful brandname in this niche. Bill Marler, along with his team [I pitch in as a freelance writer], work. They work harder than the opposition. And they don't leave a fact unnoticed and unleveraged. On K Street in Washington D.C., plaintiff firms like this one are respected for what they are: "'disrupters' of the economy."
On the defense side is Jones Day Law Firm. Over nine years the product liability attorneys like Mickey Pohl, Chuck Moellenberg and Laura Ellsworth "changed the rules of engagement" on state attorney general initiated class action suits. Instead of settling, like BigTobacco, they fought. One key weapon was plain-vanilla facts. Last July, they disrupted the lead paint part of the game by winning that litigation in Rhode Island Download Statev.LeadIndustriesAssoc.,Inc.
And it was a fact-based defense which helped Jones Day attorney Stephanie Parker bring home an unexpected victory in a BigTobacco case in Florida "Gelep v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco." As Alison Frankel reports in THE AMERICAN LAWYER, it took the jury only 90 minutes to acquit Parker's client Reynolds along with Altria. This could change "the rules of engagement" in the 8000 pending tobacco lawsuits in Florida.
Observation: Often the seeds of innovation are simply in not feeling entitled. To anything. Hard work and paying attention are blowing the old-line game of elite branding and pedigree into a million irrelevant pieces. Here is a freeconomics e-book guide to that which has had a million downloads Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova. [New-media consultant Scott Johnson at edellgfx@optonline.net pitched in, plenty.]
Why do you think that publicly traded stock reduces feelings of "entitlement"? The evidence of the investment banks, dot-coms, car companies, medical insurance industry, airlines, steel firms, etc. all point in the opposite direction.
Posted by: PerfectMarkets | March 29, 2009 at 11:30 AM