How to develop "IT-shaped thinking" as a lawyer

Nadine Rinderknecht
May 17
26 min read

Updated: Aug 25

Improve your problem-solving with vertical and horizontal thinking styles to become a specialized and versatile thinker in IT law. This cognitive training framework presents six complementary thinking styles – lateral, bottom-up, divergent, design, systemic, and visionary thinking – that you can use strategically when traditional thinking reaches its limits.

Explore your inner world by traveling from one thinking style to another. 😎🌴

Content

Starting point

Step 1: See your brain as a key to open hidden doors

Step 2: Discover "IT-shaped thinking"

Step 3: Make your mind ready for IT-shaped thinking

Step 4: Use general thinking styles as building blocks

Step 5: Strategize with goal-oriented thinking styles

Step 6: Become an expert thinker in "vertical styles"

Step 7: Balance your thinking with "horizontal styles"

Step 8: Emerge as an "IT-shaped thinker"

Your key takeaways at a glance

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Step 1: See your brain as a key to open hidden doors

Master your mind first. You can't unlock hidden doors if you don't understand the key you're holding. More here.

Step 2: Discover "IT-shaped thinking"

Train your brain with multiple thinking styles. How it perceives the world. How it actually solves problems – regardless of your knowledge or skills. More here.

Step 3: Make your mind ready for IT-shaped thinking

Take control of your mind and transform yourself from a legal thinker to an entrepreneurial thinker. More here.

Step 4: Use general thinking styles as building blocks

Start with some of the typical building blocks of creative problem solving: discover true novelty with lateral thinking, jump into the unknown with bottom-up thinking, and explore many ideas with divergent thinking. More here.

Step 5: Strategize with goal-oriented thinking styles

Become more strategic and tailor your creative thinking to what the business truly needs (design thinking), to the bigger picture in which it's embedded (systemic thinking), and what it doesn't even know it'll need (visionary thinking). More here.

Step 6: Become an expert thinker in "vertical styles"

Innovation is an extreme deviation from the norm. If you want to become an innovative problem solver, make sure that your thinking style is also extremely different. You can either focus on your strengths, do things differently than usual, or find your perfect match and do both. More here.

Step 7: Balance your thinking with "horizontal styles"

Enhance your best thinking styles with other more superficial styles to make your thinking more versatile whenever needed. More here.

Step 8: Emerge as an "IT-shaped thinker"

Know you're in control of your thinking styles, combine them to find optimal solutions, and develop a unique approach that lets you deliver value only you can. More here.

Starting point

Problem-solving is among the most important skills. Problems are everywhere, at work but also in private life. Yet most people approach them with the same old thinking. In law specifically, we're trained in analytical reasoning, risk assessments, etc. However, when new technological challenges arise that don't fit into existing legal categories, traditional legal analysis reaches its limits. That's why it's so important to understand the true nature of versatile problem-solving and supplement your core legal thinking with additional cognitive approaches.

This framework for cognitive training introduces complementary thinking styles – lateral, bottom-up, divergent, design, systemic, and visionary thinking – that you can use strategically when conventional approaches aren't sufficient. This can help you to:

Escape commoditization in traditional legal practice. While AI and legal tech automate routine work, lawyers that use cognitive versatility to tackle new, ambiguous problems become indispensable.
Position yourself as the go-to lawyer for cutting-edge issues. When new regulations or legal questions arise, you'll be the one clients go to. Not because you know everything, but because you can figure it out.
Attract the most inspiring clients, law firms, and legal minds by becoming one of them. Like-minded professionals gravitate towards each other. To connect with the most fascinating thinkers, you've to become one yourself. And an important way to do this is to "upgrade" your brain.
Consciously reflect on your thinking and strategically develop your own style. This blog is the foundation of the next blog post on "How to find your unique style in legal practice". It’s time to create what only you can see. And deliver value only you can.

Tip 1: Be careful not to see innovation as an end in itself.

These benefits may look great. But don't get lost in your ambition to find the wildest innovations. As soon as you start looking at innovation as a box you can check off, you'll miss out on the benefits. Similar as in entrepreneurship, people who are only after money are unlikely to succeed. It's people who focus on value.

Step 1: See your brain as a key to open hidden doors

Master your mind first. You can't unlock hidden doors if you don't understand the key you're holding.

Imagine living in a world where you can access the entire wisdom of humanity and are surrounded by a group of assistants ready to help you with any task. What do you do? Do you feel overwhelmed and stay away from it? Do you spend your days scrolling through endless videos? Or do you advance humanity with your innovation? With the internet and AI at our fingertips, we've unprecedented access to information and tools. But it's our mind that makes all the difference.

Tip 2: Guide your AI to a place where no human has ever been.

The best tools are worth nothing if you don't have trained your mind. Sure, you can use them for entertainment. But do you also use them wisely? This blog post is all about bringing your mind to the next level. Think of your brain as a key that can unlock the door to places that haven't yet been explored. But first, you must truly understand your cognitive strengths and weaknesses and cultivate your unique way of learning, thinking, developing, and implementing ideas. This will allow you to find your way through the chaos of endless possibilities – and ultimately guide your AI toward a place where no human has ever been.

So, where do you start?

Tip 3: Know you can grow – and add new thinking styles.

The best problem solvers typically have developed multiple thinking styles and adapt their thinking to the unique demands of each problem. So how to get there? Know that skills and intelligence are not fixed (people call this a "growth mindset"). You can train them and this is exactly what we'll do in this blog post.

And how can you understand and improve your thinking? Your next step is metacognition.

Tip 4: Start thinking about your thinking.

If you understand your brain, you can develop it further. And adopt thinking styles that don't come naturally to you. Start with honestly assessing your cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Reflect on your past experiences and consider the types of problems you find easy or challenging, your typical approach to problem-solving, and how you usually make decisions (people call this "metacognition"). If needed, you can write down everything in a thought journal.

Tip 5: Remember, it's a lifelong journey.

Truly understanding your brain can take a long time. Be sure to continue analyzing your brain in the weeks, months, and years after reading this blog post. But even once you have improved your thinking style, you need to refresh it from time to time. Much like you extend your knowledge through further education, understanding and growing your brain needs lifelong learning.

Step 2: Discover "IT-shaped thinking"

Train your brain with multiple thinking styles. How it perceives the world. How it actually solves problems – regardless of your knowledge or skills.

You've probably heard about T-shaped thinking in legal practice: Having deep expertise in law (the vertical line) combined with broad knowledge across multiple disciplines (the horizontal line). But T-shaped thinking is not enough for complex problem-solving: It focuses on knowledge/skills and it has only a single vertical line.

So, now, let's make some modifications and develop this concept further:

Focus on actual thinking: When people talk about T-shaped thinking, they're actually describing T-shaped knowledge or T-shaped skills. But true innovation requires something deeper. We need T-shaped thinking. Train your brain. How it perceives the world. How it actually solves problems. Thinking styles are more fundamental than knowledge or skills. When you improve your thinking, you can see the world through different eyes and recognize solutions that you would otherwise have missed – regardless of your knowledge or skills.
Include multiple specializations: T-shaped thinking should also include multiple specializations (more than just one vertical line). The human brain is too interconnected to solve problems using just one thinking style. We often use many that all feel “natural”. Others refer to this as π-shaped thinking, but since our thinking is centered on IT (law) in this blog, why not call it IT-shaped thinking? 😇

So what does it actually mean to become an IT-shaped thinker?

You know you're in control over your thinking styles and can "program" your mind however you like.
You combine thinking styles so that you're both specialized and versatile, helping you to find the best solution in every situation.
You ultimately develop a unique thinking style so that you can create what only you can see. And deliver value only you can. This will be the cognitive foundation for my next blog post "How to find your unique practice style".

Important: You don't have to become a master in every thinking style I'll mention below. Use them as an inspiration, choose the thinking style(s) you need to achieve your goals, and ultimately develop your own IT-shaped thinking.

Step 3: Make your mind ready: Think like an entrepreneur

Take control of your mind and transform yourself from a legal thinker to an entrepreneurial thinker.

Honestly, in the previous version of this blog, I totally forgot this step, though it's actually one of the most important ones. This blog is all about thinking, but if your current thinking is fixed on what you've done for years, you might read the next steps and believe it "somehow" doesn't make sense. So let's first align our thinking before becoming more concrete. We learned about metacognition ("think about your thinking") in the previous step, so let's apply it here.

I don't know who you are, but I assume many people, especially those who've studied or worked in traditional places, have adopted a thinking that might be very different from what's needed to become a T-shaped lawyer, let alone an IT-shaped thinker.

One of the most important foundations for this blog post is entrepreneurial thinking. Although this mindset can drive huge innovation, I haven't included it as an additional thinking style because it is (or should be) standard for lawyers to speak the language of their clients. This makes you a trusted business advisor, not just somebody who knows the law. If you're freshly graduated, know this is important in business law. I say this because I never heard about an entrepreneurial mindset in my business law courses at University of Zurich, but was bombarded with "commercial awareness" during my LLM studies.

Your mental images and beliefs shape how you approach problems, but they're often subconscious leftovers from years of experience and not necessarily optimized for the problem you're currently trying to solve. The key is recognizing these invisible patterns. For example, you may visualize goals as overwhelming dots far above you (yes, this sounds weird, but look at my example below), or have beliefs that make success feel out of reach. Once you're aware of them, you can consciously redesign them. Move the dot around mentally to feel more in control or shift limiting beliefs to empowering ones. Your brain's flexible enough to work with whatever mental framework you give it, so why not make it one that actually helps you find the best solution?

Example for visual thinkers: visualizing dots 😳

Like most people, I'm a visual thinker. So the images in my mind shape how I approach problems. Initially, these images are blurry and hard to recognize. But with awareness, you can see and modify them. For example, I visualized goals as dots far above me. While this created an interesting challenge, it also felt overwhelming sometimes. Then I thought: "If the image in my head stresses me out because I feel like I have no control, where can I set the dot so that I can reach my goal more effortlessly?" Now I position the dot at a lower level by imagining it's lying on the floor next to my feet. Instead of a burden pushing me down, I stand above it (literally!).

The same applies to entrepreneurial thinking. I assume that especially freshly graduated lawyers tend to have an image like this in their heads:

Do you see how the two areas are separated? To become a trusted advisor, you must think like your client. Like an entrepreneur. But the image in your mind isn't what an entrepreneur typically sees. So, let's change that:

This is especially important for systemic thinking at step 5. It's much more natural to think systemically when you already have the whole picture in your mind rather than seeing two distinct areas. So, whenever you start to solve a problem, remember this picture and think like your client. Now let's supplement your entrepreneurial mind with the other thinking styles.

Step 4: Use general thinking styles as building blocks

Start with some of the typical building blocks of creative problem-solving: discover true novelty with lateral thinking, jump into the unknown with bottom-up thinking, and explore many ideas with divergent thinking.

Creativity is an extreme deviation from what people consider “normal”. To give you an overview of different thinking styles, I have selected a few that are particularly useful for legal innovators. However, less extreme thinking styles (or a mix of them) can also lead to great ideas.

Let's proceed with this two-step plan:

We start with general thinking styles: This step is about some of the typical building blocks of innovative thinking, such as lateral thinking, bottom-up thinking, and divergent thinking.
We then make it more strategic with “goal-oriented” thinking styles: Here, we turn creativity based on the general thinking styles into strategy by focusing on actual goals like better fulfillment of business' needs (design thinking), consideration of the bigger picture (systemic thinking), and even finding business' needs in the future (visionary thinking).

One last thing before we start: Use this step to understand where you currently stand. For each thinking style, ask yourself whether you're already good at it or whether it's something completely new. In the next steps, we'll then build on your insights.

1. Lateral thinking – discover true novelty

Lateral thinking generates creative solutions by disrupting traditional modes of reasoning. As a lateral thinker, you solve problems through creative approaches such as:

Looking at problems from a fresh perspective (e.g., asking yourself how you could certainly not solve it and then doing the opposite).
Using random stimuli to break away from your usual thoughts (e.g., picking a random word from a dictionary, using objects unrelated to the problem, or simply going to work in a more inspiring room).
Suspending judgement to consider even absurd ideas (e.g., exaggerate the problem).
Challenging assumptions and conventional wisdom (e.g., imagine the opposite is true).
Making provocative hypotheses (e.g., ask "what if" questions).

Lateral thinking is THE approach that enables you to break free from conventional thinking in legal practice. It's the basis for goal-oriented thinking styles such as design, systemic, and visionary thinking. Without lateral thinking, these new ways of thinking would probably not be accessible in legal practice. With this approach, you can evolve from a reactive box-ticker to a proactive advisor.

For example: Instead of "How do we comply with data protection law?" you can ask "What if data protection law didn't exist but users still cared about privacy?" This reframes compliance from legal burden to competitive advantage. Or, especially if you're very experienced, you can imagine adopting a beginner's mind to feel less frustrated about tick-the-box compliance and rediscover its potential (step 5.1 for Blankpage's Privacy Notice insights). However, to demonstrate this potential to your clients, you may adopt the visionary thinking described in step 5.3 to show them the new possibilities they wouldn't have been able to recognize themselves.

2. Bottom-up thinking – jump into the unknown

Bottom-up thinking means you go "specific to general". If you are a bottom-up thinker, you usually start with a fresh perspective, mostly free from general principles, biases, or assumptions. So you don't have a clear outcome in mind. Anything is possible. Then you read about specific details, recognize patterns, and let the data guide you. Over time, a general overview emerges. This data-driven approach is often used in fields such as natural sciences or business analytics, where empirical observations lead to general insights, models, or theories – but it can also be very effective in legal innovation!

People sometimes approach problems with fixed ideas about solutions, influenced by existing frameworks. Frameworks that may be outdated but still seem valid because their effectiveness hasn't been measured (recently). While it may make sense to build on existing foundations in some cases, it's also valuable to approach problems with an “anything is possible” mindset, start from zero, and simply let the data speak for itself. You'll be surprised how much easier it's to gain new insights when you induce them from specific information rather than deducing it from established principles.

For example: Study several court rulings to identify patterns and ultimately develop your strategy. Or start writing a paper with a vague goal in mind, spot unexpected patterns, and let the solution crystallize over time (this approach is described in How to write a truly innovative paper if you want to know more).

3. Divergent thinking – explore many ideas

Divergent thinking encourages you to search for many ideas. Divergent thinkers use open-ended and spontaneous approaches like brainstorming to generate many ideas. They embrace ambiguity and risk-taking, rather than quickly narrowing down options.

That's the third approach relevant for legal innovations, given a certain tendency to stick to traditional solutions ("we've always done it this way"). By prioritizing the number of possible solutions before evaluating their merits, you can find unexpected ones. Divergent thinking encourages legal practitioners to brainstorm many different approaches; turn regulatory constraints into a variety of creative solutions, rather than limiting themselves to a single traditional path; and take new, calculated risks that add value for the business like lower costs, faster results. And solutions that are not only compliant but are also better aligned with the company's objectives.

For example: You can solve a legal problem by drawing insights from different disciplines like computer science, psychology, ethics, and economics. Or you can generate lots of ideas for a paper, rather than sticking to the first solution that comes to mind.

Step 5: Strategize with goal-oriented thinking styles

You may have noticed that the general thinking styles above are focused on finding (many) creative ideas. But creativity isn't an end in itself. It's a strategic tool for finding solutions that have long been hidden and that can solve business' problems better than all the conventional solutions. So let's take all this wild creativity and strategically narrow it down to:

what the business truly needs (design thinking),
what the bigger picture is (systemic thinking), and
what it doesn't even know it'll need (visionary thinking).

1. Design thinking – focus on what the business truly needs

Design thinking emphasizes understanding and empathizing with people' needs, using an iterative process of prototyping and testing to refine user-centric solutions.

The process typically involves five phases:

Empathize with the user: Understand the user's needs, pain points, and experiences (e.g., survey data subjects about their understanding of their rights, concerns about privacy, and experiences with exercising control over their data).
Define the problem: Clearly articulate the problem to be solved (e.g., "How can we balance robust protection of data subjects in the situation XY with the competing interests of businesses and the state bodies in the processing of data?").
Ideate solutions: Generate a wide range of creative ideas (e.g., conduct brainstorming sessions using divergent thinking).
Prototype solutions: Create tangible representations of ideas (e.g., write a short text introducing your effective solution).
Test (and implement) solutions: Gather feedback and refine your solutions (e.g., ask other experts for feedback or, more importantly, conduct a second round of surveys with the data subjects, then iterate and write a longer final text).

The way I see it, design thinking (or more specifically in the legal field: “legal design”) is the most relevant goal-oriented thinking style. Creativity is only useful if it gets to the core of the company’s problem. Otherwise, it’s just shiny ideas. Design thinking enables you to be more business-centered: "transform legal products, services, work, systems, business strategies, ecosystems and user experience“. This comes from the book The Legal Design Book by Meera Klemola & Astrid Kohlmeier (2022) and emphasizes that design thinking can be used in everything related to business. The possibilities are endless... But don't get lost and stay focused on what the business really needs!

For example: Include visual aids in legal documents using diagrams, flowcharts, icons, or infographics to illustrate legal processes, hierarchies, or relationships between concepts. Or take it one step further and empathize with your users' relationship to legal content and design solutions that serve both their needs and your business goals. With Blankpage, I believed that a privacy notice could offer more than just a text that's so uninteresting to users that it has to be hidden in the footer of the website. That's why I reframed it as a blog post with simpler terminology and more actionable advice that helps you manage your data, deciding when to protect your privacy and when to share data for better experiences. You can view my privacy notice alongside all the other blog posts on my homepage, or by clicking here: How to manage your privacy (Blankpage's Privacy Notice).

2. Systemic thinking – observe the bigger picture

Systemic thinking views systems as interconnected wholes, focusing on how the individual parts interact and relate to each other. Systemic thinkers emphasize that the behavior of a system results from the relationships between its components and not just from the components themselves ("the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"). Systemic thinking takes into account feedback loops that influence system behavior over time. And it recognizes non-linear dynamics where small changes can have disproportionately large effects. This thinking style is essential for managing complex systems such as ecosystems, organizations, social structures, and, of course, the legal system.

The strength of systemic thinking is that it doesn't take massive changes to create legal innovation. Even small, strategically positioned interventions can have disproportionately large benefits (or disadvantages, if things go wrong) across many practice areas and business interests. So be careful. This is precisely why it's important to gain a broader perspective using interdisciplinary specializations to benefit from feedback loops and ripple effects. This can include economics, psychology, business strategy, but also exotic disciplines, as long as they help you better understand your systems.

For example: Study how legal, economic, political, and other factors interact to influence social structures and human behavior. Or view an organization's digital infrastructure as an interconnected system, where vulnerabilities in one component can compromise the entire network's security.

3. Visionary thinking – think about future needs

Visionary thinking refers to articulating a compelling vision for the future that includes a clear and ambitious long-term goal that inspires others. It requires a forward-thinking mindset that anticipates future trends, opportunities, and challenges while keeping a holistic perspective that understands how different parts are interconnected. If you are a visionary thinker, you challenge the status quo, explore unconventional ideas, and are willing to take calculated risks to drive innovation. Moreover, you are able to articulate your vision in a way that keeps people focused on a common goal and develops a sense of purpose. But you also try to remain open to change and adapt your strategies to new circumstances – while remaining true to your larger vision.

Visionary thinking is one of the most difficult thinking styles. Rather than simply adapting to current needs or systems, it requires long-term strategies that consider future client needs in future systems. The challenge lies in the highly uncertain nature of the future. Since it's impossible to predict what's coming, you must take an active role in shaping it by creating legal innovations that clients don't even realize they'll need yet. This approach offers more freedom than merely responding to current needs or systems. However, you must also find ways to limit that freedom to produce precisely what your future clients will need.

For example: Instead of just meeting today's data protection law requirements, use an anticipatory approach and create solutions that already take new developments into account.

Step 6: Become an expert thinker in "vertical styles"

As you read through the different thinking styles above, you probably noticed that you use each of them from time to time. In fact, most people use a mix of different thinking styles depending on the situation. So how can you become a better innovator if you already use most of these thinking styles? Keep in mind that creativity is an extreme deviation from the norm. If you want to become a legal innovator, you need to make sure that your thinking is also extremely different. One way to achieve this is to become an IT-shaped thinker.

While the next step is about becoming a versatile thinker (the horizontal line in “IT-shaped thinking”), this step allows you to select the styles you want to focus on (the vertical lines). Of course, you can choose any styles you like. However, if you want to take a more strategic approach, you may want to focus on your strengths (or your interests), do the opposite of what's normally done, or find your perfect match and do both.

Double down on your best thinking styles. Even if you use all of these thinking styles, there are probably some that come more easily to you and that you've already mastered. By focusing on your strengths, it'll be harder for those who are only average in this area to keep up. Use this as your “unfair advantage”, as they say in the entrepreneurial world.
Find the predominant thinking style – and do it differently. Although it's often heterogeneous, analyze which thinking style is typically used to solve the problems you are currently working on. Is there a blind spot? Could you use a different thinking style to find new solutions? Sometimes there were good reasons for starting to use a particular style. But circumstances may have changed. Don't just automatically copy styles without considering the current context and checking whether they're still the best ones for your problem.
Find your perfect match. You can also try to find your perfect match in an environment where the thinking styles you excel at are not widely used. Start by analyzing your surroundings and the feedback you've received and ask yourself: How do others typically solve problems? Is there something about my approach that's different? When you're in a place where your style is unusual, it's easier to find solutions that were previously overlooked.

Tip 6: Your rare weakness is your greatest strength. Especially if you work in a place where your thinking is unusual, your greatest strength might be perceived as your greatest weakness and you need to be prepared for pushbacks. In times like these, remember that a rare style can help you achieve something great. It's particularly important that you understand how your unique thinking can be useful to your boss and how to communicate this clearly. Don't let your thinking be underestimated because of your communication skills. Once people recognize the value of your rare thinking, your job might become your perfect match. If that's not the case, it might be time to look for someone who recognizes your potential.

Step 7: Balance your thinking with "horizontal styles"

Enhance your best thinking styles with other more superficial styles to make your thinking more versatile whenever needed.

Remember that we said that the best problem solvers are versatile and use different thinking styles depending on the situation? That's exactly what we're doing in this step. We supplement your best styles ("vertical thinking styles") with other, more superficial styles ("horizontal thinking styles"). That's similar to my other blog post How to start your career in IT law, where it can be useful to position yourself as a generalist with a specialization.

Tip 7: Collaborate to enhance versatility while also developing your own.

Although it's a great idea to work with people with different cognitive styles to complement each other, the focus of this step is on how YOU can improve your thinking. When it comes to something as fundamental as cognitive skills, you shouldn't rely entirely on others.

What exactly are horizontal styles? They are much less trained and more superficial, but they can make your thinking more flexible, allowing you to succeed in a wider range of situations. This is particularly worthwhile if you focus on “more modern” thinking styles, such as design and visionary thinking, but also occasionally need to solve problems in more traditional ways. This makes you a problem solver who can comfortably operate in two worlds. So let's have a look at what these styles can be:

Styles that counteract one of your strong vertical styles (e.g., you are excellent at brainstorming many ideas but not so good at deciding on the best one);
Styles that you find so fascinating that you become the go-to person for those specific problems; or
Styles that bring you closer to your (career) goals.

Note that's not a static assessment, as it depends on your current job or even just the task you are currently working on, or where you want to be in the future. The vertical styles are pretty much static (although you can also change them if needed), but horizontal styles can be developed at any time. Remember metacognition? It's like you can “program” your brain. If you need a new style, just add it to your thinking repertoire.

Tip 8: Challenge your brain.

It may be difficult to think in a new way, or even counterintuitive, at the beginning. As always, your brain needs to be trained to get used to the new style. Start with a one-day challenge: choose a thinking style and try to use it as often as possible. You can even extend this to a 7-day or 30-day challenge. Try it and see what happens!

Step 8: Emerge as an "IT-shaped thinker"

Know you're in control of your thinking styles, combine them to find optimal solutions, and develop a unique approach that lets you deliver value only you can.

Now that you've decided on your vertical and horizontal thinking styles, it's time to position yourself as a true IT-shaped thinker. I don't know what your thinking looks like, but in this step, you can figure out when to use which of the above thinking styles, what potential pitfalls there are, and how to deal with them.

1. Lateral thinking – discover true novelty

Remember: Lateral thinking generates creative solutions by disrupting traditional modes of reasoning.

When to focus on lateral thinking:

Need to develop new theories or arguments that could revolutionize a field when traditional problem-solving methods have not produced good results.
Foster a culture of open-mindedness, curiosity, and continuous learning that leads to personal and organizational growth.
Break through mental barriers and overcome cognitive biases that limit creativity.