# Why Law Firms Should Invest in Innovation

> Source: https://bryter.com/press-releases/investing-in-innovation/

In our July Innovation Series event, three legal innovation heavyweights discussed how investing in innovation really works.

**April Brousseau, Andrea Miscolczi and Hariolf Wenzler discussing funds, risks and returns in law firms and corporate legal departments. **

In our Innovation Series, we regularly discuss important topics with leading speakers.

**Investing
in Innovation**

The last BRYTER Innovation Series in July 2019 in Berlin shed an interesting light on how different law firms approach investing in innovation and [no-code](https://bryter.com/trends/what-is-no-code/). While innovation sounds appealing, is not that so obvious how to invest in innovation with a return. This is what we wanted to discuss with our heavyweight guests who took the time to share their successes and failures with the audience.

There was a recurring pattern that was shared by all panellists which included April Brousseau, Head of Innovation and New Business, Simmons & Simmons, Dr. Andrea Miskolczi, Chief Innovation and Business Development Officer, Wolf Theiss and Dr. Hariolf Wenzler, CEO at Schnittker Möllmann Partners. Not surprisingly, everyone was convinced that upfront investments are necessary to foster innovation within a law firm – though it might be difficult to amass sufficient funds within traditional law firm structures to actually kick-off significant initiatives.

The approaches of the three speakers where different – describing different approaches to initiate innovation in a law firm in general.

Simmons & Simmons, probably one of the most advanced law firms in [legal operations](https://bryter.com/trends/what-is-legal-operations/) (underpinning their ambition with the recent acquisition of Wavelength), established a legal innovation team within their law firm that is able to act with great autonomy as long as an ROI can be shown – which seems to be the case. The legal innovation team at Simmons & Simmons uses this freedom to push innovation initiatives ahead focusing on client-facing, revenue-generating projects.

> Innovation needs to start with innovative culture.
> April Brousseau

Wolf Theiss takes – according to its Chief Innovation and Business Development Officer – a different approach in starting initiatives and projects to embed an innovative and creative mindset within the law firm first. Several projects tried to align the whole law firm to think outside the beaten path and to try new things – even if some projects fail.

Hariolf Wenzler described vividly that investing in innovation is a long-term endeavour.

Now successful companies have invested for years in their digital strategy before their new projects flourished or they generated significant revenue. This means – according to Hariolf Wenzler – also that an ROI in legal innovation is not a short-term pursuit but a longer journey that will benefit those who started early and persevered through difficulties.

The panel discussion was followed by an open
discussion and networking until late that day.

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Should you be interested in learning how to build [self-service apps](https://bryter.com/applications/self-service-applications/) without programming using our intuitive “drag-and-drop” editor, [book a demo](https://bryter.com/get-demo/) to learn how BRYTER [no-code platform](https://bryter.com/no-code-platform/) can activate [workflow automation](https://bryter.com/trends/workflow-automation-for-legal-operations/) in your law firm.