By Guy Dawson, CEO

Despite the encouragement to self-help with the writings of such as Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey on winning friends and being highly effective the one habit that remains rigid is the resistance to change.

So as legal insurers struggle to make safe the behaviour of older practitioners, and only have hope for influencing the practice of younger ones, those heralding change from paper to digital from old language to new, from old precedents to better new ones, struggle for converts.

Admittedly change is painful – like learning the operation of a new phone or assembling Ikea furniture. A bit of time and a bit of patience is required for both, and yet neither is plentiful in the life of a practitioner. Yet the rewards are!

It seems the most successful firms welcome and embrace new technology, modernise their precedents, improve management, incentivise staff and refresh their practices each and every day. They make more money, and the practice of law becomes a little easier. Vitality is their habit.

Sounds exhausting – but much less so than the apathy of endless hours of unchanging slog.