Welcome to Creative Lawyers
Creative Lawyers works with firms, legal departments, and law schools to design custom services that equip leaders with the knowledge, creative confidence, strategy, and professional development 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 leads design thinking workshops, facilitates innovation challenges, delivers retreat keynotes, partners with leaders to provide ongoing strategic support, 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. 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 Goodwin Chief Innovation Officer Rachel Dooley) and Fast-Tracked: Emergent Issues in the 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
Law Firm and Legal Department Advising
Jen provides expert law firm and legal department advising services to help organizations strategize for the future. With a focus on promoting a culture of innovation, Jen will work with in-house and firm teams to develop a customized strategy based on the client's unique goals. She increasingly advises on developing a Generative AI integration strategy, keeping firms and corporate counsel at the cutting edge during a time of exciting change.
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 Nursing 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.
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. Participants will leave feeling energized, confident, and excited about the firm's capacity to innovate.
Summer Associate
Innovation Challenges
Creative Lawyers offers a unique Summer Associate Innovation Challenge program that teaches a wide range of professional skills to your firm's future lawyers in a dynamic and engaging format. The program teaches ideation techniques, entrepreneurial mindsets, and design thinking. Firm summers will participate in exciting, fast-paced challenges that promote impact skills like collaborative problem-solving, public speaking, and active listening. In a competitive hiring landscape, the program demonstrates to top law school talent the firm's commitment to innovation, creativity, and embrace of fresh perspectives.
Generative AI
Curriculum and PD Programming
Law schools and law firms that want to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving technological landscape should consider adopting Creative Lawyers' Generative AI educational content. This customized programming highlights the most effective ways for lawyers to leverage Gen AI technology. Through training on how to use this technology as a thought partner, creator, and accelerator, rather than as a replacement to learning and practice, Creative Lawyers can help your law school or firm reshape and enhance the way lawyers learn, work, lead, and deliver services.
Lawyer "Pause"
Retreats
Lawyer "Pause" Retreats provide a much-needed break for lawyers who crave the chance to step away from their hectic schedules and reflect on where they've been and where they'd like to go next. These retreats offer an inclusive and supportive environment with other lawyers and expert facilitation to help participants enjoy focused time for introspection, network with accountability partners, and emerge with an action plan for the future. Join an upcoming retreat to develop your own action plan or work with Jen to design a retreat for your firm's lawyers.
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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,
Goodwin
Jen and I bonded during the pandemic over our shared passion for progress in legal, creativity, and innovation. 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. Both programs were amazing and well-received by all participants.
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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 continuing working with Jen and Creative Lawyers.
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 (many with backgrounds in law) 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!
In the Media
McKinsey In the Balance Blog
Leaders and Changemakers Podcast with Hedieh Fakhriyazdi
Interview with PD Insider
Agiloft: Freedom, Opportunity, and the Future of Law
Geek In Review Podcast
