Welcome to Creative Lawyers
Creative Lawyers works with firms and corporate law departments to design custom services that equip leaders with the knowledge, creative confidence, strategy, and leadership programming to prepare their teams to thrive in an exciting future.
About the Founder
Jen Leonard founded Creative Lawyers to support law firms, corporate legal departments, and law schools that understand the urgency to modernize practice, services, and education. Jen works with leaders to cultivate innovative cultures, build nimble and collaborative strategies to navigate a volatile environment, and promote skills and mindsets that drive change. She develops cutting-edge Generative AI education focused on law firm business and lawyer formation implications, leads design thinking workshops, facilitates innovation challenges, delivers retreat keynotes, serves as a fractional Chief Innovation and Generative AI Officer to provide ongoing strategic support for her firm clients, designs Generative AI content for application in law school curricula and professional development programs, and offers structured events that help lawyers reflect on their careers as they build the next stage in their journey.
Before launching her company, Jen was the first Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Future of the Profession Initiative at Penn Carey Law. In that role, she closely studied changes in the legal industry and translated insights into various curricular and thought leadership programs. She practiced law for ten years after graduating from Penn Carey Law in 2004 and before returning to build the Law School's Center on Professionalism, which became a nationally-recognized law student professional development program. At Penn, she teaches Generative AI in Law Practice, Design Thinking for Lawyers, Modern Law Firm Business and Innovation Strategy, and Attorney Well-Being as Ethical Obligation. She has also taught design thinking and ideation techniques to industry leaders in Wharton's Executive MBA program and Penn Nursing's Summer Innovation Institute.
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Jen is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, a member of Penn's Inn of Court, served on NALP's Driving Inclusion Task Force, and received Penn's Beverly Edwards Award for Exceptional Leadership. She also hosts several podcasts about the legal profession, including Law 2030, Future-Proofed (co-hosted with Kirkland's Chief Innovation Officer Rachel Dooley) and Practising Law Institute's Fast-Tracked: Emergent Issues in the Legal Profession. She writes and speaks frequently about innovation and the legal industry's future. Her most recent work appears in Globe & Law Business's AI and the Legal Profession.
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Learn more about Jen's background here.
Featured Expert
Founder Jen Leonard brings a contagious energy with years of experience in her work to modernize the legal profession. The following outlets have featured Jen as an expert.
Services
Innovation and Generative AI Consulting
Services
Designed for firms aiming to elevate their innovation efforts, this advisory service provides comprehensive support to define and execute a firm-wide strategy. The Creative Lawyers team works closely with firm leaders to deliver a customized experience, aligning firm priorities with actionable strategies and education. Services may include forming a dedicated innovation task force, creating effective, action-oriented agendas, analyzing firm-wide surveys on attitudes and trends, conducting regular "office hours" or "town halls" to centralize firmwide education, developing monthly competitive intelligence briefings, evaluating current initiatives, and crafting new, pilotable projects.
Design Thinking
Workshops for Lawyers
As a lawyer herself, Jen understands that lawyers sometimes struggle to innovate. To combat some common psychological and organizational barriers to ideation, she offers education she has learned from leaders at Wharton and Penn healthcare leaders that can help lawyers move beyond the way they've always done things. By tapping into their inner creativity and leveraging proven frameworks to generate new ideas, these interactive and engaging workshops teach lawyers how to develop more human-centered approaches to their work that unlock new value. Firms can spend rare dedicated time ideating solutions to a pressing challenge and will leave the workshop with hundreds of new ideas for how to tackle it. The experience elevates collaborative ideation and the production of organizational creative confidence.
Firm Retreat Speaking Engagements
Jen will deliver a compelling call to action to the lawyers in your firm or legal department. Her presentations explore the emerging conditions that demand new approaches to service delivery, the innate creativity within each of us, and the specific skills that prime lawyers to be exceptional innovators. Blending macro-level research on shifting trends, rich case studies, and concrete recommendations for firm responses, these presentations balance theory and practice. Each presentation is custom-tailored to the firm's specific goals and features highly engaging and interactive content. Participants will leave feeling energized, confident, and excited about the firm's capacity to innovate.
Legal
Innovation Challenges
Looking for a way to get your lawyers and legal teams actively involved in developing new ideas? Creative Lawyers offers a unique Legal Innovation Challenge program that teaches various skills and techniques for generative team-based creativity in a dynamic and engaging format. The program teaches ideation techniques, entrepreneurial mindsets, and design thinking. Participants will enjoy exciting, fast-paced challenges that promote impact skills like collaborative problem-solving, rapid prototyping, and iterative refinement. In a rapidly changing landscape, the program demonstrates the firm's commitment to innovation, creativity, and future-focused orientation to your talent.
Generative AI
Educational
Programming
Law firms looking to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving technological landscape can benefit from Creative Lawyers' Generative AI educational programs. These programs are designed to level-set education across varying experience levels, offering a non-technical perspective that focuses on the future of the business model, lawyer formation, leadership mindset shifts, and co-design with clients. Through customized presentations, participants will learn specific strategies firms can use to navigate the complex terrain ahead.
Through engaging discussions, firms will consider how to use Generative AI as a thought partner, creator, and accelerator, rather than a replacement for learning and practice. Sessions cover the essentials of Generative AI, its potential impact on firm business models and lawyer formation, and ways to connect with stakeholders to develop strategies that leverage emerging technology. This approach expands opportunities for innovative client service, helping your firm reshape and enhance how your lawyers learn, work, and deliver services.
Chief Innovation Officer
Coaching
Bringing a leader into a Chief Innovation Officer role involves complex variables that include defining the role to align with your organization's mission, equipping your new leader with cutting-edge innovation research, and offering a chance for your CINO to reflect on the challenges of innovation and strategies for responding. This customized coaching service for your CINO provides an invaluable opportunity for reflection, education, and practical application of innovation approaches to your firm's projects. A tailored program covers essential topics such as defining the CINO role and developing clear metrics for success, implementing design thinking, fostering a culture of innovation, and piloting new projects and assessing their outcomes.
Whether you're looking to support a newly appointed CINO or aiming to enhance your firm's innovation strategy, one-on-one coaching helps leaders navigate their new responsibilities with confidence. These services ensure that your firm leaders are equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to drive transformative change and sustain a culture of continuous improvement.
Change for Good
The legal landscape is changing at a breakneck pace. Accelerating technology, shifting regulatory frameworks, global economic disruption, client demands, the war for talent, changing attorney career preferences, and new ways of working are reshaping the industry. Never before have creativity and innovation been more important in legal, but virtually no lawyers have formal training in how to respond. This is where Creative Lawyers comes in.
Testimonials
The Honorable Bridget McCormack
President & CEO, American Arbitration Association
Having worked closely with Jen Leonard at the Future of the Profession Initiative, I have been continually impressed by her creative, and forward-thinking approach to guide organizations into the future of the legal profession. Jen is a change-agent for the legal industry. She is an original thinker, able to analyze industry trends and devise creative solutions. She is also a natural facilitator and collaborator, adept at bringing together diverse viewpoints and fostering constructive dialogue. I can't think of a better strategic advisor for any law firm, law school, or other legal organization as it reimagines its future. I will be finding every single way I can to continue to learn from and collaborate with Jen.
Rachel Dooley
Chief Innovation Officer,
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Jen and I bonded during the pandemic over our shared passion for creativity, innovation, and making more rapid progress in updating the way lawyers serve clients. Since then, we've worked together to design two different projects--McKinsey Legal's first Legal Innovation Competition and Goodwin's inaugural "Generation AI" Summer Associate Innovation Challenge. Jen designed both programs with education, impact, and engagement top of mind. In each case, participants emerged from the program feeling energized, equipped with new mindsets and techniques for stimulating creativity across teams and generations.
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Jen is the rare person who understands the barriers to innovation in legal, approaches to change used in other fields that break through those impediments, and how to craft and deliver engaging content that gets everyone involved. We also have a blast working together--I can't wait to do it again!
Sozi Tulante
General Counsel, Form Energy, Inc.
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Jen has a profound grasp of the challenges that we face in the legal profession and the need for developing innovative solutions and approaches to meet those challenges. From working with her, I have been impressed with her ability to look at developments and innovations in other industries to inform how legal organizations can be nimble, responsive, and innovative. She is a leader and a motivator. Indeed, those skills, combined with her knowledge of the legal industry and cross-disciplinary approach, enable her to inspire teams to collaborate, build skills, and embrace a mindset that will promote innovation and help future-proof any organization. I am proud to call her a thought partner and a visionary.
Ann Vermes
Chief Operating Officer, Litigation & Strategic Initiatives, Weil Gotshal
Working with Jen Leonard is an incredible experience. She is a creative and innovative thinker, and delivered well beyond my (high) expectations on a recent program that she spearheaded for the Weil Legal Innovators Program. Feedback from the program participants was universally stellar. Jen is an engaging speaker and an inspiring teacher, and I very much look forward to working with her again.
Joe Borstein
CEO, LexFusion
The legal industry is moving into the modern era whether we practitioners like it or not. Jen not only understands this deeply, but is working hard every day to make the transition smooth for the many stakeholders whose lives will be disrupted. More than simply reducing risk, Jen also sees the promise and opportunity that legal innovation can provide to the wildly underserved consumers of legal services. Her work at Penn Carey Law School has drawn on insights from various academic disciplines (psychology, engineering and medicine) to inform and inspire the next generation of lawyers to think more broadly about what it means to solve legal problems. She’s also a very good friend and human being.
Marion Leary, MPH, PhD, RN
Director of Innovation,
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
I have worked with Jen over the past few years, and in that time, she has become an indispensable collaborator in the work I do around human-centered design, design thinking, and innovation. The way she uses her knowledge, background and experience to engage with students and professionals alike is something I wish all educators could embody.
Most recently, she taught an ideation session at our Summer Innovation Institute focused on health equity. The attendees were absolutely blown away by her session; they not only learned new skills but had fun in the process. She is truly a leader in this space and is helping to infuse creativity and innovation into all professions not just law.
Hedieh Fakhriyazdi
Chief Diversity Officer,
White & Case
Jen's credentials and expertise, coupled with her ability to think creatively and collaboratively about solutions that resonate for her clients, make Jen an invaluable resource. Her facilitation of educational workshops is deeply engaging, insightful and clear. She is a skillful moderator, facilitator and trainer, who leverages her warmth and ability to connect with people in her teaching style. Jen is bar none, one of the best facilitators and consultants I have had the pleasure of working with. I very much look forward to working with Jen and Creative Lawyers again.
DeAnna Englezos
Business Development Innovation Manager,
Vinson & Elkins
I cannot speak highly enough about Jen’s ability to seamlessly facilitate an engaging and impactful hybrid/virtual workshop. She has a knack for breaking down barriers in a room and quickly getting down to business in a relatable, interesting, inspiring, thought-provoking, and very practical way. Jen is artful in her ability to engage all participants and deliver content that inspires creativity and innovation in a time when those two things are needed more than ever in the legal industry.
“Relevant, Engaging, Effective and Awesome!” And, “Loved EVERYTHING about Jen’s workshop” were just a few of the rave reviews our global team of high achievers had to say about Jen. She is a rare gem in this industry and brings a fresh approach to solving current issues in Big Law and in Life. Should you have the opportunity to work with Jen - take it!