Husch Blackwell’s business management and optimized operating model is profiled by Bill Henderson in his noted blog, Legal Evolution. In the post, Henderson does a deep dive into how Husch Blackwell deploys multidisciplinary teams and how the firm’s lawyers collaborate as peers with business professionals in data, process, technology, design, and business operations.
To illustrate, Henderson provides a brief history of the firm, and its progressive decision to appoint a non-lawyer as CEO. He follow with an in-depth case study of the firm’s sophisticated product liability and toxic tort practice and it’s differentiating embrace of technology and collaboration with the Knowledge Management and Technology Innovation team and Legal Operations team to develop a repeatable solution at a scalable cost for clients.
Husch Blackwell’s multidisciplinary national coordinating counsel (NCC) model, named Innovat Alliance relies on a sophisticated data, process, and technology infrastructure that is proprietary to the firm.
Partner J.Y. Miller, who leads the firm’s Asbestos Litigation practice, told Legal Evolution that he remembers the most important innovation was the firm aligning by industry.
“The idea was to get transactional lawyers, litigators, and regulatory lawyers to collaborate with one another in service of better client solutions,” Miller said. “Everything we’ve built since then flows from those decisions.”