Monique Moore has recently submitted her PhD thesis for review where she explored the challenges of third party contracting in biotechnology commercialisation. Whilst undertaking her studies she worked with the research team at the University of Newcastle exploring legal innovation. She now works with the Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise team at the University of Newcastle seeking to optimise the universities social impact and translation and commercialisation activities.
Educating Lawyers for Innovation: Where to from Here and Why?
Abstract:
Futurists such as Susskind emphasis the importance of lawyers being innovative in order to respond to technological disruption in the legal profession. However, as this paper highlights, there are particular challenges that lawyers face in being comfortable and competent at innovation. These challenges are multi-level, stemming from personal, socio-cultural and structural factors. This paper presents our empirical research into how best to educate tomorrow’s lawyers to innovate. It presents both the data from that research and our practical experience in the classroom and the boardroom to explain why we believe that deeply collaborative, multi-disciplinary, human-focused approaches, such as a design thinking methodology, provide the greatest promise for equipping lawyers for tomorrow’s world.