What Masterchef can teach innovative lawyers

I love to cook - for me it is tune out time, and a way of giving my creative side a little air time. Whilst I am happy to experiment, I still tend to turn to cookbooks (and increasingly food blogs), for inspiration. When it comes to baking, I must have a recipe. Some years ago, I attended a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival lunch hosted by Gary Mehigan of Masterchef fame. For me, part of the intrigue of the show is the ability of contestants to whip up a sponge, scones, hollandaise sauce or whatever, seemingly without a recipe in sight. Gary, when asked, divulged all contestants are taught the basic ratios, and from there, could adapt the basic recipes for all sorts of different foods.  So I was intrigued when I heard about an ipad app which sets out ratios for baking, bread making and sauces. It appealed to my logical side. The premise of the app is that, once you know the basic ratios of ingredients, you can make baked goods and sauces without reference to a recipe.

What does this have to do with legal practice? In reality, no matter what many lawyers may think, most legal work involves routine steps and practices. Best practice involves use of workflows, where the anticipated actions in a matter are set out. "Smart" workflows will interrogate a user and create prompts for additional tasks, depending on the answers provided. For example, in litigation,if a positive answer was given to the question as to whether discovery of electronic material is to be provided, additional steps regarding extraction and de duplication of such material would be included.

Workflows are powerful tools, as a quality control measure, as a means of capturing and transmitting knowledge and particularly as part of the planning process for any firm managing fixed fee agreements. They tie in well with legal project management. Sharepoint has workflow capacity inbuilt, and add ons like those marketed by Nintex take them to a whole new level. A must for any firm of the future.