Groundwork

• Create consciousness of issues with leadership & membership
• Present as much information as possible to key audiences
• Present more information & engage dialogue
• Emphasize opportunity & urgency

Preparation

• Identify key staff team
• Research & gather materials (e.g., bibliography of resources, glossary)
• Familiarize leadership, staff with basic legal futures ideas
• Formulate task force goals
• Identify key stakeholders
• Set timeline, steps toward endpoint

Creation

• Identify & solicit leadership of task force
• Finalize structure, composition, process, & timeline in consultation with task force leaders
• Solicit leaders of committees
• Finalize committee composition, process, & timeline in consultation with committee leaders
• Announce task force

The Work

• Orientation of task force members
• Keynote by futures leader
• Encourage widespread brainstorming & innovation in committees & work groups
• Identify issues that might be too contentious to pursue and move as appropriate
• Synthesize the ideas into a package that resonates with decision makers
• Development of consensus on
  • Principles
  • Key Problems
  • Solutions
  • Strategy
• Outreach to membership & beyond
  • E-mail, blogs
  • Town hall

The Ending & New Beginning

• Final task force meeting
• Celebration
• Media outreach
• Relentless stakeholder outreach
• Implementation
• Justice Innovations Center
• Rinse, repeat

Note

Throughout our Task Force work, we have borrowed heavily from the impressive work of other bars and law societies (see acknowledgements). As is true with bespoken work, we were unable to locate a basic template to use as our starting point. This template is an attempt to help more bars and law societies move even more quickly toward the future. It is based on what we did but is improved to reflect what we learned we should have done.