As in-house counsel, your value to your company is increased by your ability to harness the power of ideas. Everything was born from an idea. An idea gave birth to the computer I use to draft articles such as this. An idea gave birth to the internet you use to search for and read articles such as this. Before there was the smartphone you use, the car you drive or the chair you sit in, there was an idea that each of those items was possible. Ideas have debased us (slavery), elevated us (emancipation), brought us down (Jim Crow laws) and raised us up (Civil Rights Movement). They survive their creators, and form the bedrock of just governments (democracy) and unjust ones (communism and dictatorship). They are bulletproof, such as the ideas of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, whose ideas survived their assassinations.  Ideas transform business, commerce, law and communication. An idea preceded every advancement, change, choice and decision. If you can create an environment in your legal department where ideas are born, germinate, grow and flourish, you will create a legal department that solves not only legal problems, but business problems, sales problems, customer problems and every company problem imaginable.

So how does one transform one’s workplace into an incubator of ideas? Let’s start by bringing back the suggestion box. Create the following form and ask everyone in your department—attorneys, paralegals, assistants, etc.—to complete it once a month:

  • My idea is: 
  • It will solve the following problem: 
  • This is how my idea can become a reality: 
  • This is how I will make my idea a reality: