Source: Forbes
Mindset matters now more than ever. In a real-time, AI-enabled business environment marked by speed, complexity, interconnected risk, and uncertainty, a flexible, forward-thinking mindset has become a requisite to navigate change. Responsible, informed, and creative deployment of AI, data, and other tools is an important element of a growth mindset. So too is developing what Accenture calls a “digital core” (data, AI, and cloud competency). Teamwork, a shared sense of purpose, curiosity, constant learning, informed experimentation, and a culture that values and supports these attributes, are additional characteristics of a forward-thinking mindset.
Law and business have divergent mindsets. The “mindset gap” separating them has widened dramatically during the past quarter century. The divergence is a tale of different responses to a rapidly changing business, geopolitical, and macroeconomic environment. Business has adapted a growth mindset; the legal industry has remained rooted in its fixed mindset and culture.
The “mindset gap” separating law and business adversely impacts not only the legal industry but also business, and society. It diminishes the legal function’s efficacy and dilutes its potential enterprise value by narrowing legal’s sphere of influence to “legal” matters rather than expanding its imprint across the many business units law intersects with. It also undercuts enterprise transformation by failing to leverage legal’s strategic and problem-solving capabilities and institutional knowledge to create business value. Perhaps most importantly, law’s mindset gap has deprived society of an accessible, affordable, fit-for-purpose legal function. This has produced an erosion of public trust in the legal profession, its institutions, the rule of law, and democracy. That negatively impacts commerce, the economy, business, commercial transactions, judicial resolution of disputes, and human rights.
Curiosity, creativity, constant learning, thoughtful experimentation, foresight, agility, and an empathetic team orientation are key attributes of an AI-era legal function. They must be accompanied by a holistic focus on business, societal, and global developments, particularly macroeconomic, sociopolitical, and other forces that are reshaping life and business. A legal function with this mindset and culture will once again attract “the best and the brightest” to it from multiple fields. It will reclaim its purpose, elevate its standing, and better serve business and society in real-time, AI-era world.
Read the full article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcohen1/2025/07/23/stare-decisis-to-foresight–a-legal-mindset-for-the-ai-era-world/
