In 2002 an American professional baseball team called the Oakland Athletics won 20 games in a row, setting a modern-day record.  Their success was based on a unique approach to recruiting talent.

 

Billy Bean, the manager of the financially challenged team, pioneered a new analytical and data-driven approach to selecting undervalued players. He bought players with high on-base and slugging percentages, which he believed better indicated success than traditionally valued qualities such as speed and contact. 

 

Billy Beane’s statistical approach, which came to be known as ‘moneyballing’, was so successful Brad Pitt played him in a Hollywood movie.

 

Inspired by Oakland Athletics’ success, Caren Ulrich Stacy wondered if legal firms could benefit from a ‘moneyball’ approach.  Caren had years of experience working as the head of recruitment with several major US law firms, and after more than 3,700 hires she decided a combination of technology, science and data would lead to better hiring decisions.

 

So she left her law firm and formed a company called Lawyer Metrics.  She then spent four years moneyballing almost 4,000 lawyers.

 

“We borrowed from the Oakland Athletics.  We replicated what they had done in the legal field, looking at the biographical and behavioural traits that made someone a success versus the things that were being overvalued, like grades and law schools,” says Stacy.

 

“Eighty percent of firms define the qualities of a successful lawyers in a similar way – good communication, analytical skills, planning, efficiency, business acumen, goal setting, authority and presence.  These are the qualities we think of when we think about a great lawyer. But law firms were paying too much attention to grades and the reputation of law schools, and not looking at other qualities like language proficiency.”

 

Her venture was a success and the company was bought out, which allowed Stacy to explore her ideas for innovation in the legal profession in other ways. Stacy knew many women who had left the practice and wanted to come back. She decided to apply her knowledge of data and statistics to helping women return to the profession by creating the OnRamp Fellowship, the first ‘returnship’ for women lawyers.

 

“The idea was to bring women lawyers back into the profession by analysing them, analysing the organisation, and making matches based on data rather than on likeability.  We wanted to do this for the good of the profession in order to replenish the pipeline with women.”

 

The OnRamp Fellowship started with just four companies.  It now works with 29 law firms, five legal departments and a very large bank.  It has expanded internationally to Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

 

Stacy is currently the founder and CEO of Diversity Lab, which creates and invests in innovative talent management and diversity initiatives, including the OnRamp Fellowship.   Her experience makes her uniquely placed to contribute as a founding board member of the College of Law’s new Centre for Legal Innovation.

 

Stacy says the Centre for Legal Innovation  has an important role to play in convincing lawyers of the need to adapt to the new ways of doing things in an industry that has been historically inert.  However, the difficulty will be getting the support of mid-ranking lawyers.

 

“The millennials are going to buy in because they are used to technology and are comfortable with it. Management are going to buy in because they have to do something to gain a competitive advantage and continue to win clients. Then there is everybody in the middle – the other 80 per cent that doesn’t value change, doesn’t value risk and don’t see an immediate reward.”

 

“Part of the reason why it is difficult to introduce things that are disruptive but potentially beneficial is because you have to bring everyone in the middle along as well.” 

 

Right now it is the clients who are pushing the profession to think about their technology and innovation. “In-house counsels are coming under pressure from their companies which want to reduce legal fees and reduce risk.  So the company is pushing on legal, and legal is pushing on the outside law firms”

 

“Where a company once had more than 100 firms working for them, they now have 10 or 20.  So everyone is getting a smaller piece of the pie, in terms of how many law firms get work and how much work is going out.  If clients are still paying then law firms do not feel compelled to change.  But if the client is offering a consequence or a reward, then firms are going to be much more likely to innovate.”

 

She cites a recent example in the US were five very large legal departments issued mandates about outside counsel diversity.  “Now the law firms are paying attention because it is not just one client, it is five.  And that’s a tipping point.  They know they are on the verge of all clients starting to ask about diversity,” she says.

 

Stacy’s contribution to the Centre for Legal innovation will be to look at how law firms can confront disruption through a new approach to talent and the role of the talent manager.  

 

“I am not a technologist – I am all about talent. Not enough law firms include the talent management person at the management table.”

 

“Law firms include the talent person when they are hiring or promoting.  But they miss the link of including the talent person when they are talking about implementing a new technology.  That’s the best time to have the talent person in the room,” she says.