LWOW Sprint-X 2021: 20 January - 10 February
4 hours every Wednesday for 4 weeks @13:30UTC (8:30am EST) (plus optional 30 minutes networking)
LWOW provides up-skilling and reskilling, transforms culture and relationships (especially with clients), and helps teams create innovative solutions to real business-of-law and corporate social responsibility challenges. Utilizing design thinking methods of innovation developed specifically for legal professionals. Most importantly, LWOW infuses the hearts and minds of those who participate with a passion and the tools for collaboration and transformation.
WHY LWOW SPRINT-X:
The focus is changing from what services and expertise legal professionals provide to how they provide them. The highest quality legal expertise (at the best price) is not sufficient. In today’s global, complex, multi-disciplinary marketplace, clients need legal professionals with a high risk tolerance and business and growth mindset who are collaborative, creative problem finders and solvers, and who serve as counselors (not just legal advisors).
Given the needs of the global and complex legal landscape, successful legal professionals must be creative problem solvers, leaders with a high risk tolerance and business mindset that can use technology, collaboration, leadership, and communication skills to overcome the walls of law.
What it is:
This year LWOW Sprint-X will be an all-virtual experiential learning program in law, innovation, collaboration, and transformation. Sponsor participants collaborate in multi-disciplinary teams composed of legal and business professionals and students from law and business schools around the world who work together virtually to create viable solutions to real problems related to the business of law and social justice over the course of a 4 week period in January and February of 2021. In addition to creating and presenting the foundation of a practicable solution, participants learn design thinking principles and new ways of communicating, leading, and approaching collaboration and culture change that can be applied in the future within the organizations in which they work. Sprint equips participants with skills and experiences required to build and maintain successful client relationships.
Why 4-WeekS:
LWOW Sprint-X is designed to match the demanding environment legal professionals work in today which often requires extraordinary talented multi-disciplinary teams to be pulled together really quickly to work collaboratively on urgent matters. LWOW mirrors real life Agile Sprints, often done over 4 weeks to meet client demands. This new time frame will allow teams to collaborate in a more in-depth manner to accomplish the same goals (and more!) as the original 48-hour Sprint. The intensive LWOW Sprint mirrors real life sprints to meet client demands. As such, it requires hard work and resilience, delivers personal and professional growth and, of course, celebrates the LWOW community of change agents.
WHO'S INVOLVED and WHY:
Individual Participants are a mix of legal professionals, business executives, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, technologists, regulators, judges, compliance professionals, academics, and law and business student who want to:
Learn new methods of multicultural intergenerational teaming, innovation, and design thinking.
Hone leadership, collaboration, and creative problem solving skills
Build networks and transform relationships with clients and colleagues
Re-engage and create change at work with new tools and techniques
Legal Departments/Law Firms/Law Companies sponsor teams at LWOW Sprint-X in order to:
Transform how its professionals collaborate with clients, with legal service providers, and with each other.
Train-the-trainers i.e., cultivate future leaders so that they can add value in new ways including leading collaboration and innovation training sessions for others in your organization or at client’s organizations
Build the foundation of a solution to a business-of-law or CSR/social justice problem
Recruit diverse, global talent
Be recognized as innovative and a thought leader
HOW IT WORKS: THE 3-4-5 Method of INNOVATION in 4 weeks
The community meets real-time online for four hours each Wednesday over four weeks. At the end of the four hours, Lead Hackers help identify the tasks the Student Hackers must complete over the course of that week. Lead Hackers mentor the students during the week by guiding the problem finding and ideation processes. Lead Hackers will also provide introductions for interviews related to market research and targeted consumer audience. Lead Hackers will likely spend approximately 2 hours per week via email assisting the students.
Each team is composed of 2 to 3 professionals selected by the sponsoring entity who serve as Lead Hackers alongside the other team members who are assigned to the team by LWOW including 2 to 3 Student Hackers and 2 LWOW Hacker Mentors (mix of professionals and academics). This core team is aided by 1 assigned, dedicated LWOW Project Manager (who prevents drift) and 1 LWOW Innovation Coach (who drives quality). Additionally, all Sprint-X teams have access to resident experts in business planning, pitching start-ups, technical engineering, branding and marketing.
Teams will go through the 3 (phases) - 4 (weeks/sessions) - 5 (steps) Method of Innovation developed by Professor Michele DeStefano:
Week 1: Sponsor participants have already attended the LWOW Virtual Sprint KickOff but will be reacquainted with the program and each other during the first session. This phase creates a foundation of trust for the intense teaming that comes next. It also focuses on problem refining. Teams will explore and narrow down their topic challenges.
Weeks 2-3: Over the next two sessions, teams will participate in intensive hacking, dynamic, design-thinking exercises centered on problem finding, consumer storytelling, ideation, and solution development in order to co-create the foundation of a viable solution to a narrow assigned problem.
Week 4: In the last session, the Sprint-X concludes with a short ConPosium in which teams pitch their solution in 5 minute ignite-style format to a panel of multidisciplinary judges who ask questions and provide feedback. Although the level of viability will vary, all teams’ solutions will be “Projects of Worth” yielding substantive growth in problem-solving skills, mindset training, networking and relationship building. Participants will have grown individually and learned collectively and will return to their places of work or study with a wealth of new tools for work and creative proactive collaboration skills.
TEAMING:
At the LWOW Sprint-X, everyone is put on a team. Each team is sponsored by a corporate legal department, law firm or law/legal tech company that assigns a narrow business-of-law challenge or social justice problem that the Sponsor cares about. Each team is comprised of: 2-3 professionals selected by the sponsoring entity who serve as Lead Hackers alongside the following team members who are assigned to the team by LWOW: 2-3 Student Hackers; 2 LWOW Hacker Mentors (mix of professionals and academics). This core team is aided by one dedicated LWOW Project Manager and one Innovation Coach selected and assigned by LWOW.
WHEN:
LWOW Sprint-X will take place every Wednesday from 20 January - 10 February 2021 on a virtual platform.
