In my first year of law school, I was pretty consumed by case law, outlines, and trying to survive the Socratic method. But what I didn’t realize then was that the skills I would rely on most in my career were not to be found in any legal textbook.

Law school taught me how to analyze.
Business taught me how to innovate.

Law school taught me how to find answers.
Business taught me how to find better ways.

What I wish someone taught me in those early years is this:
Innovation is not a department. It’s a mindset. It’s noticing the bottlenecks, the friction points, the things we all do because “we have always done it that way” and asking “why?”

We lawyers learn about precedent and the importance of following it in law, but in business, always doing things the same way is stagnating. You cannot scale inefficiency.

Nothing in law school really prepared me for that. But learning this changed everything about how I lead today.

If I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be this:
Don’t just learn the law. Learn how to look for and build better ways.
Your future clients, and your future self, will thank you.

Written by Joanne McPhail