Embracing Creativity in Legal Solutions

Creativity is not just about unique design ideas, right-brain thinking, and great marketing campaigns. It’s about finding creative solutions to issues that need solving, bringing fresh thinking to get things done, and most importantly, it’s about moving the world forward.

Because of all of this, creativity should be embraced at all points of professional work, from the boardroom to the cubicle to the shop floor. It should be seen not only as part of the work that goes on in creative industries but all industries, including law. But more than that, we should be looking for ways to bring together people with different skills, expertise and industry experience to solve business problems, because cross-industry innovation has proven effective for solving many contemporary issues facing our world.

These are some of the underlying motivations behind our legal site, Ideacreative. At the heart of our site is a synergy between quality legal solutions, the kind that comprehensive fund agreements involve, carefully crafted by experienced professionals and the kind of creative thinking that many would think shouldn’t be found in a legal document.

What if I told you that a fund document does not need to be four pages of legal jargon? That it can be more than this? That it can include the fresh ideas that could make your project easier, simpler and more achievable?

We’ve highlighted similar past synergies between legal and creative professionals such as in our recent article on Protecting Trade Secrets. In this article, we explored the value of inviting both parties to the table to negotiate an agreement (in this case, a Confidentiality Agreement) and how it can actually save you time and money.

Just like past articles on hiring a Patent Lawyer or Bio-Piracy agreements, the point is that structured documents can bring much flexibility if the right people are involved in the right way.

Just as fund agreement documents can have flexibility so can many other things in life, if we are willing to try and do things differently. Just as fund agreement documents can be streamlined, others too can be simplified. Just as fund agreement documents can be designed to fit different needs, so too can many other things from marketing campaigns to creative processes.

Whiteboard processes can be streamlined; customer service can be simpler; design processes can be redesigned; teams can be structured differently; better inventory control can be implemented; checkout service can be simplified.

These are all small, simple changes that can make a big difference to your business. And more importantly, these are small, simple changes you can begin implementing now. These can allow you to bring out the creativity in your team or employees and this is how you can innovate without reinventing the wheel.

You can begin implementing these changes through a process of involving your team members. And for this we’re going to share a little insight into what we do at Ideacreative.

In our business, when we sit down with clients we aim to work within any existing system they have in place by suggesting small, simple changes we can make to adapt their process. Then we use what we know, to come up with ideas that meet the needs of the project and recommend ways design and law can work together.

In our business, we partake in a process of first seeking to understand the underlying principles of how a project is already achieved, we then come up with ideas that either meet or exceed the objectives of the project and with these ideas, we then build a road map to achieving the end goals.

The insight here is that it’s important to know and understand what is currently in place when you need to change something, because you then have an understanding of how something works, (e.g. how a fund agreement works) while you can also get an understanding of why something isn’t working and then you can come up with ideas to address these issues.

For this reason, to think creatively about how its structured, we work closely with our clients to gain a full understanding of what is already in place and the issues at hand. We then use what we know to come up with ideas and suggestions to meet the needs of a project, we then suggest how we can streamline existing processes and where collaboration between legal and other parties is required, we coordinate, follow through, and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Another example of where this approach has been highlighted is in our latest article on An Overview of Fund Agreements: Essential Elements and Best Practices. This recently published article outlines the fundamentals of a fund agreement in a user-friendly, easy to use document. It features a concise table of contents (See Appendix A), carefully designed headings (See Appendix B), and a table of clauses offered based on needs (See Appendix C).

Which leads us to Encourage… the Creative Element Invites Discussion – Right Brain Meets Left… Business and Designers Working Together – which outlines how we integrate right brain thinking with legal and business practices and here, we outline a few examples of this process undertaken by our professionals:

Can you see how our innovative approach, here at Ideacreative.com, allows art, science and law to be integrated into new and creative processes to move your ideas forward? And that this approach simultaneously streamlines legal processes to enable a creative synergy between existing elements?

So take advantage of all the order that fund agreement documents can offer, how it can be effective and efficient, and enjoy a process that is also a creative one.