Innovation Certificate Program.

Dechert, in partnership with the firm's Director of Innovation. Each Innovation Certificate Program (ICP) cohort contained a strategic combination of lawyers and business services professionals from practice groups and business units around the firm. This meant that in addition to rigorous training, participants in each annual class joined an expansive, multidisciplinary innovation network that Dechert could tap for a broad range of strategic and innovation initiatives.

I designed the curriculum in close collaboration with the Director of Innovation and served as lead instructor for five years. I assembled a teaching team of legal and technical experts who joined as guest lecturers, plus ICP alumni from past cohorts who came back to teach. The program contained 20+ hours of live virtual instruction across three modules plus a two-day in-person design sprint. Every ICP class focused on a different high-level design challenge, with examples including "The Future of the Client Service Experience" and "Increasing the Usage of AI Tools at the Firm".

Module 1 focused on reframing traditional legal problem solving, moving from a straight line between problem and solution to the iterative, human-centered process of design thinking. Program participants also received instruction on organizational design, learning to see the law firm as a system that can be deliberately designed. Participants were organized into multidisciplinary problem-solving teams and presented with a real-world innovation challenge directly relevant to the law firm.

Module 2 was an immersive two-day, in-person sprint. Each team rapidly built out the details of their ideas, with input from leaders and support and inspiration from outside design, behavior science, and AI experts. The in-person nature of the training also helped to form a cohesive innovation cohort across offices and practice groups within an otherwise distributed law firm.

The final module confronted the realities of actually transforming how law firms operate. Each team built the argument for implementing their new ideas by considering technical feasibility, organizational fit, and business viability. The module concluded with teams presenting the case to leadership for why the firm should actually move forward with their ideas.

200+ alumni across the firm's practice groups, offices, and business services teams. This was a self-sustaining alumni network that became a real organizational asset. ICP graduates went back to their day jobs and applied what they'd learned and their newfound innovation confidence to their own initiatives. Examples included redesigning practice group meetings, trailblazing new tools for business development workflows, and building cross-functional working groups that elevated innovative new ideas to leadership. The Innovation Certificate Program approach proved durable enough that when AI emerged as the firm's central strategic concern in late 2025, the same model was adapted directly into an AI Innovation Certificate Program in Year 6.