How to build your unique practice style in IT law (Part 1: Create a prototype)

Build your practice style in IT law intentionally by thinking like an entrepreneur, doubling down on what makes you unique, and prototyping a framework with your AI team. This guide walks you through nine steps to build a distinctive, interdisciplinary practice style that clients can't find anywhere else.

Look into the mirror and you'll see your practice style. 👀

Content

Part 1: Create a prototype of your unique practice style

Starting point

Step 1: Think long-term and start small today

Step 2: Make your mind ready - think like an entrepreneur

Step 3: Double down on your unique core

Step 4: Meet your Al team

Step 5: Open your vision by focusing on variables

Step 6: Create your own framework

Step 7: Add a traditional practice style

Step 8: Create a feedback loop to iterate your practice style

Step 9: Build your branding

Part 2: Integrate and adapt the prototype to your workplace

Coming soon!

Starting point

The legal landscape is way too homogeneous. Lawyers competing on the same traditional differentiators: specialization, industry focus, or slightly different advisory approaches. When AI makes legal execution cheaper, unique practice styles and having distinctive ways to solve problems are likely becoming more valuable. And for that, we combine legal expertise with outside perspectives like legal tech, UX design, project management, storytelling, data-driven decision making, and many more.

In my previous blog post How to develop "IT-shaped thinking" as a lawyer, we built the intellectual foundation: IT-shaped thinking instead of T-shaped. Keep your legal foundation, but instead of just having one specializations, you become more interdisciplinary.

This blog post builds on that foundation. You're designing your own practice style. Some lawyers might discover theirs by accident. But here we're more strategic. We'll move from an entrepreneurial mindset through self-discovery to a framework that's based on your unique core. Finally, we supplement your unique approach with the traditional approach to get the best of both worlds.

Step 1: Think long-term and start small today

We often life in auto-pilot without big, strategic goals. We look up at established partners and automatically assume that's how things get done. And we copy their styles. But what if you wanted to find your own style...? It doesn't just magically appear overnight after you've worked long enough. Instead, it grows through trying things out, thinking strategically, and taking the initiative to shape your career.

So I've become a fan of becoming more intentional and creating long-term strategies, even if they're vague. But they still give me some sort of direction. Yes, life happens and you cannot control everything, but if you know your direction you don't get easily deviated into a place you don't actually want to be. You move into a zone where you can increasingly use your biggest strengths for a fulfilling job. This blog post is here to help you become more intentional about developing and managing your practice style. And as we'll see throughout the steps, it doesn't have to be a random process.

Tip 1: Start small. Start today. We'll get more into this later, but know already now that you don't have to go full into your style once you have found it. You can start with small steps like a hobby or side project. Even that gives you direction.

One way to think strategically and long-term about your style is to start thinking like an entrepreneur...

Step 2: Make your mind ready – think like an entrepreneur

In my other blog post How to develop "IT-shaped thinking" as a lawyer I mentioned at step 3 that thinking like your client, so like an entrepreneur that sees both risks and chances, elevates you from "somebody who knows the law" to a trusted business advisor. But thinking like an entrepreneur is not only useful when you solve specific problems for clients, but also – more fundamentally – when you set up your own practice style. Indeed, one key career advice is to take more ownership and treat your career like a business.

But until now, you might have been thinking like an employee. Someone who works within existing systems. Now we shift to the entrepreneur's thinking. Someone who creates systems to find new solutions (including new practice styles). When you think like an entrepreneur, three things happen:

• You take ownership of your development and career instead of waiting for others (or random luck) to shape them.

• You start seeing your style as something that needs to solve real problems better than what's already out there.

• You naturally focus on differentiation because your success (and survival...) depends on being unique, not just fitting in.

However, especially freshly graduates might still have a mental model like this:

Do you see how the two areas are separated? This isn't what an entrepreneur typically sees. So, let's change that:

When you already have the whole picture in your mind rather than two distinct areas, it's much more natural to think holistically like an entrepreneur. And, especially in this blog post, it opens up your vision to consider risks and chances beyond the legal risks that we have become so used to, so that you can build your style around it.

Tip 2: Imagine you're starting your own law firm. Let's start with a mental exercise. Right now, you might be sitting in your office. Look around. Your computer, your desk, your coworkers, and the whole culture surrounding you. It has all been set up by your employer. Now imagine to walk outside the office. To be surrounded by absolutely nothing. You can set up anything you want. But you have no income and risk ending up homeless if you don't start to act like an entrepreneur right now (sorry, it sounds harsh, but it's a useful mental exercise). What practice style would you chose? Would you offer the same services like everybody else? Why would clients chose you over all the other lawyers? How could you stand out? What makes you so unique that clients choose you? This mental shift into the world of entrepreneurship is powerful because it forces you to chose a practice style outside of a cozy environment where you might be tempted to just look up to established partners, try to fit in, and do the things like everybody else.

Of course, you don't have to start your own law firm. But just thinking about your own style is the first step in differentiating yourself. Don't worry about whether it fits your employer yet. We'll get more strategic about integration in the steps below. For now, the focus is purely on you.

Step 3: Double down on your unique core

In the previous step, we left our cozy office and immersed ourselves in the wild world. But what if this world is increasingly populated by AI? As AI transforms legal work, people are asking what lawyers can still do that AI can't. The usual answer? "What makes us human". But this misses where the real opportunities are. This generic "human skills" advice doesn't help you differentiate. When everyone's told to focus on the same human advantages like judgment, empathy, or building trust, you end up competing with every other lawyer.

AI can analyze contracts, find standard issues, write first drafts, and many more things. It can even recognize and explain rare edge cases, but it's unlikely to invent new approaches that have never appeared in its training data. What remains with AI isn't "what makes us human" but "what makes you unique". Your own personality, perspective, and thinking style can create solutions so far from the training data that AI cannot access this blind spot. When AI takes away all the standard legal services and commoditizes them, lawyers are reduced to their unique core. But our uniqueness isn't just what's left over. It's our biggest advantage. The lawyers who thrive won't be those who compete with AI on routine work, but rather those who build practices so distinctly their own that clients can't imagine working with anyone else. Because it's so difficult to replicate a practice that's built around your unique personality, perspective, and thinking style.

In the past, many lawyers did their careers backwards. They looked at the market for "hot" practice areas and problems to solve, picked what looked best, and then tried to change themselves to fit the problem. Or even worse: they just copied what successful lawyers did. Now, AI doesn't just reduces lawyers to their unique core. It might (hopefully) push them to a more entrepreneurial approach called "double down on your strengths". Focusing on your strengths will have a higher impact on becoming great in your field than focusing on your weaknesses and it's how some of the most successful businesses were built (more information here). In essence: First look inside to identify your strengths and focus on improving them even further. Only then do you look outwards for problems you're best suited to solve – and finally build your practice around it. Think about it: If someone else picked a legal problem because it fits their natural skills and interests, how can you keep up when you're forcing yourself into their strengths? You can't. That's why we do it the other way around.

Tip 3: Focus on increasing your strengths, but also on searching for opportunities with anything else that makes you unique. Even weaknesses. This blog post isn't just about your strengths. It's about your whole self. While I'm a fan of "double down on your strengths", I don't think we should waste the opportunity that come with everything else that makes us unique. Maybe your weakness isn't a bug. Maybe it's a feature that amplifies your unique perspective and is exactly what's needed to find a better solution. For example, if you have the same weakness as your client, you truly understand their pain points and find better solutions.

Tip 4: Already start as a newbie, even if it's just a side project or hobby. Don't make the mistake of thinking you need to master traditional law first before you can find your own style. You can start even if you're a newbie like me and build your unique style while learning all the traditional stuff. It can even be just a side project or hobby. This comes with many advantages: First, you don't have any old professional image you need to get rid of. Second, in the time of AI and fast tech changes, being adaptable and thinking differently is becoming more valuable than just knowing law by heart. It's what differentiates you from other early-career lawyers who still focus on traditional skills. And third, your practice style filters out matches, like when you apply for a job or network with people. Finding the right employer or colleagues that support you puts you in the best position to accelerate your unique practice style.

But before showing you how to build a prototype of your style, we need to set the technical foundation: meet your AI team!

Step 4: Meet your AI team

Finding your own style can be difficult and you'll need help. Besides human help you can also set up your AI team to create a prototype and test it before throwing it out into the wild. I use Claude AI for this, as it takes context better into account and thinks along. In short: it behaves more like a thinking partner rather than just someone who executes my ideas. But of course you can use whatever AI you prefer.

To set up my AI team I created "Projects" in Claude (the equivalent to "GPTs" in ChatGPT) and used them as my mentors. They all come from different fields so that I get a holistic perspective. Say hello to your new team members: an entrepreneur, a partner in a law firm, another partner with the interdisciplinary skillset you have (optional), and one or more in-house counsels.

For each mentor you'll also see some prompts to get you started. Adapt them where needed.

1. The "entrepreneur mentor" helps you think like an entrepreneur

You'll have noticed that step 2 is about making your mind ready by thinking like an entrepreneur. I included this so early on because the entrepreneurial mindset is the foundation of this whole blog post (and generally, of my blog). You first have to get the right mindset to guide your AI (and yourself) into your unique practice style. Otherwise, you might put hours into a style that sounds good but is not feasable in practice. Just make sure to not going down the rabbit whole for too much time and only cover the basics of entrepreneurial thinking. The next mentor, the partner in a law firm, can give you specific guidance on how to think like a business person in the context of a law firm. That's a more specific way to learn the entrepreneurial spirit and is actually more targeted to your practice style than having a generalist entrepreneurial mentor. So start now with learning the basics using the prompt in the expandable list below and then move on to the partner mentor to "fine-tune" your entrepreneurial thinking.

Give your AI this prompt to learn the basics of entrepreneurial thinking...

I'm trying to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and I don't have any background in business. I want to understand how entrepreneurs think, not just what they do. When answering, please:

• Use real-world examples to illustrate concepts.

• Explain the reasoning behind the thinking patterns, not just what they are.

• Keep explanations practical and grounded rather than theoretical.

• Point out common misconceptions or mistakes people make when they're learning this stuff.

  
  

I've got a series of questions below. Please answer them one category at a time. Start with the first category, and after you finish answering those questions, I'll ask you to continue with the next category.

How entrepreneurs see the world

• How do entrepreneurs spot opportunities that others miss?

• What's the difference between identifying a problem and identifying a market opportunity?

• How do successful entrepreneurs decide what's worth their time and what isn't?

How entrepreneurs make decisions

• How do you make good decisions when you don't have all the information?

• What's the difference between a calculated risk and a reckless gamble?

• How do entrepreneurs know when to pivot versus when to persist?

How entrepreneurs handle uncertainty

• How do you get comfortable with not knowing if something will work?

• What mental frameworks help entrepreneurs stay motivated through setbacks?

• How do successful people reframe failure as learning?

How entrepreneurs test & learn

• What's the smallest action to test if an idea has merit?

• How do entrepreneurs balance planning with doing?

• What questions do they ask to validate assumptions quickly?

2. The "partner mentor" helps you tailor your style to law firm specifics

Your partner mentor thinks both like a lawyer and a business person. It's your most important mentor as it analyses your ideas in the context of a law firm, with all its unique characteristics, constraints, and chances. It's here to critically reflect business feasability of your style and give practical implementation tipps. Since you might want several conversations with your mentor, you can create a whole project/GPT with the prompt below.

Give your AI this prompt to create your partner mentor...

1) You're an experienced partner in a modern big law firm in Switzerland. You're the team head of the IT/IP team, for which your firm's particularly well known. You know the law firm inside-out. You're a lawyer but also have the mindset of an experienced business person.

2) You love to mentor younger people and have been assigned to me, an early-career lawyer. You give ambitious and critical feedback, but always say it in a supportive and motivating tone. Your goal is to show me how a big law firm in Switzerland works and what it takes to be an excellent lawyer. I really want to understand how a partner thinks, so make it as authentic and realistic as possible.

3) Also include insider tips which are 1-2 steps ahead of those for my associate colleagues. Also include common misunderstandings that young associates typically have and common mistakes they make. But make both the insider tips and the misunderstandings concise and to the point.

3. The "interdisciplinary partner mentor" helps you personalize

This mentor is optional. Set it up if you're an interdisciplinary lawyer or want to become one to differentiate yourself from more traditional lawyers. In my case, I have a partner mentor that has also great UX design skills. Why not chose a UX designer as a mentor? The problem is that the AI would operate in the context of a UX designer such as a design agency. That's a completely different context than a law firm. In other words: A partner with UX design skills looks at a UX design with other eyes than a UX designer in a design agency. And as we know, context matters enormously in AI. So opt for a partner in a law firm and enhance it with any other interdisciplinary skill you like. It will give you more strategic advice tailored to the context you actually work in. In the prompt below, simply amend the text in bold with the specific skillset you need.

Give your AI this prompt to enhance your partner with additional skills...

1) You're an experienced partner in a modern big law firm in Switzerland. You're the team head of the IT/IP team, for which your firm's particularly well known. You know the law firm inside-out. You're a lawyer but also have the mindset of an experienced business person. Beyond your legal credentials, you bring deep expertise in [ADDITIONAL SKILL]. This isn't just theoretical knowledge. You actively apply this skill to client work, pitch strategies, team management, and mentorship. It's become a key differentiator for you and the law firm.

2) You love to mentor younger people and have been assigned to me, an early-career lawyer. You give ambitious and critical feedback, but always say it in a supportive and motivating tone. Your goal is to show me how a big law firm in Switzerland works and what it takes to be an excellent lawyer. I really want to understand how a partner thinks, so make it as authentic and realistic as possible. You'll challenge me to think through problems using your [ADDITIONAL SKILL] lens, showing me how combining legal and [ADDITIONAL SKILL] thinking creates better outcomes for clients and stronger competitive positioning for the law firm.

3) Also include insider tips which are 1-2 steps ahead of those for my associate colleagues. Also include common misunderstandings that young associates typically have and common mistakes they make. But make both the insider tips and the misunderstandings concise and to the point.

4. The "in-house counsel mentor" helps you create value

This mentor is both the start and the end of your prototyping. It makes sure that your style is valuable for clients and not just an academic exercise. Since it's important to have many external perspectives, you can even set up many different in-house counsel mentors. For example, one working in a B2B business and the other in a B2C business. Or counsels working in different industries. Or anything else that suits your goals. Plus, you can make them extremely individualistic and create personas like the one in the example below.

Example of a persona: IT law counsel in a B2C start-up...

Adopt this persona:

Name: Andrea Lehmann

Age: 38

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

1) Education

- Law degree (lic. iur.) from University of Zürich

- LL.M. in International Business Law from King's College London

- Bar admission in Canton Zürich

2) Professional background

- 6 years at a big law firm specializing in data protection and IT contracts

- 3 years as Senior Legal Counsel in a mid-sized B2C business

- Currently: Head of Legal & Compliance at a growing B2C fintech startup (250 employees)

3) Role & responsibilities

- Ensures FADP (Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection) and EU GDPR compliance across all products

- Drafts and reviews Terms of Service, Privacy Notices, and Cookie Notices

- Manages vendor contracts, SaaS agreements, and API partnerships

- Advises product teams on legal implications of new features

- Handles customer complaints escalated to legal (requests, account disputes)

- Coordinates with external counsel for litigation (rare but happens)

- Conducts quarterly compliance training for employees

4) Tech savviness

- Comfortable reading API documentation and understanding technical architecture

- Uses tools like OneTrust for privacy management, DocuSign for contracts

- Can discuss encryption standards, authentication flows, and cloud infrastructure with engineers

- Subscribed to SwissLegal, Jusletter IT, and IAPP newsletters

5) Pain points

- Product teams often loop him in too late in the development cycle

- Constant regulatory changes (especially post-Brexit, US-Swiss data transfers)

- Balancing user experience with legal requirements (consent flows, cookie banners)

- Limited budget means he's a team of one with an overworked paralegal

- Swiss-specific requirements often overlooked by international vendors

6) Goals

- Build a "privacy by design" culture so he's not always the bottleneck

- Automate routine legal workflows (NDA generation, GDPR request handling)

- Stay ahead of EU regulations that'll eventually influence Swiss law

- Avoid regulatory fines, FDPIC (Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner) audits keep him up at night

7) Daily routine

- Morning: Emails, Teams, review overnight product changes

- Midday: Meetings with product, engineering and compliance

- Afternoon: Contract reviews, policy updates, legal research

- Evening: Reads legal tech blogs, occasionally works late during product launches

8) Personality

- Pragmatic and solution-oriented (not the stereotypical "legal says no" type)

- Fluent in German, English, and conversational French

- Slightly stressed but tries to maintain work-life balance (plays tennis on weekends)

- Prefers clear documentation over verbal agreements

- Has a dry sense of humor about legal absurdities

You see, you have a big team of AI mentors ready to help you. But where to start? There's no one way to interact with them. You can either move back and forward or use one after another.

Want to know how my journey was? I initially started with the entrepreneur mentor to get a foundational understanding of entrepreneurial thinking. Then I moved over to the general partner and the UX design partner to get a rough idea about the style (UX privacy). After that, I interviewed the in-house counsel about typical problems and obstacles they face (really, I framed it like an interview) and discussed the result with the two partners to refine the style. The general partner was usually more traditional and risk-averse than the UX design partner, so that helped to find a more balanced style (you don't want to become too exotic). Finally, I moved back to the in-house counsel for a stress-test.

Tip 5: Use your AI team for targeted problem solving but also to explore new territory. 

You might have specific ideas of your style already from the beginning. But I suggest to be open, see what your mentors tell you, and iterate. In my case, they often addressed new areas I didn't even think of. The typical process looked like this: I had an idea and started to refine it with AI. AI brings up new information (even if just as a side note), so I asked more questions about it, which inspired me to look at my style differently. So I started to refine my idea with AI again until it made eventually sense. And also remember that we're just creating a prototype. You'll have to iterate also once you've thrown your style into the real world. Iterating. Iterating. Iterating.

Step 5: Open your vision by focusing on variables

Let's first open our vision before creating a prototype. We often approach work with a very fixed idea of how things get done. But everything could be done differently. In fact, everything could be treated as a variable if it solves the problem better. Example: Formats. Traditionally, legal advice was fixed on memos or other legal docs. Now imagine the format becomes a variable. Sometimes the best solution might still be a traditional word document. But other times it's a website/app, an excel sheet, a flowchart, or anything else that solves the problem best.

Tip 6: Choose your variables carefully. Formats were just an example. You can turn anything else into a variable too. But that doesn't mean that you should turn everything into a variable. That's too complicated and might confuse your clients and colleagues (and probably also yourself). It's your task to choose which elements stay fixed and which become variable. Since the variables are the ones that typically make your style unique, chose them carefully.

Step 6: Create your own framework

I said at the beginning of this blog: it's important to become more intentional and create long-term strategies. But until now, we were mostly in the explorer mode to live our practice style in a rather wild and spontaneous way. You might have accumulated many ideas of how to bring all this into legal practice. But you also might not have a clear overview. Now let's become more strategic and create a framework to systematically understand our styles.

You'll get these benefits:

• You think it through (I made many iterations to my framework). Plus, it helps giving AI more thought-out instructions that lead to better answers.

• You turn 100 scattered ideas into 1 tangible framework. This gives you direction/vision and you can become even more intentional about your career.

• You turn your style into a more powerful tool. Once you have a clearer view, you can solve more complex problems.

• You can use it as a marketing tool that differentiates you, especially if you give your framework a proprietary name (we'll come to that at tip 8 below).

You can create any kind of framework as long as it helps you. This ranges from a visual representation on your website (like I did), a one-pager, a blog post, or even just a doodle on a piece of paper. You can publish it (creates pressure to do it well), only show it to a colleague to get feedback, or keep it private until you've gained more experience. Complete freedom to you.

Tip 7: Set up your own sandbox. I decided to create my "Privacy Chameleon Framework" on www.uxprivacy.world. Since I don't have much traffic yet, it's a low risk environment that allowed me to explore even unusual ideas with no time constraints. That's highly useful in the early stage of innovation development. Most people learn in higher risk environments (like working for a client) and might simply fall back to what they've always done because of time pressure or don't find the courage to deviate. Do yourself a favor and create your own sandbox. It can be public (like a website) or completely private. I chose to create a portfolio website: If somebody's interested in my practice style, I have something tangible at hand and can give them directly the link to my projects and framework. Plus, you can put it on your LinkedIn profile and CV. This way, people see that you don't start from zero and might even give you opportunities. So show off your stuff.

Tip 8: Give your framework a proprietary name. Some might think that's too much consultant/marketing speech. I'm more a fan of branding and differentiation (hello, Privacy Chameleon Framework!). Lawyers look way too similar to each other anyway. And especially with AI, I think its important to coin a proprietary word. Because the term is rare and not generic, fewer phrases compete for the same idea in the output of the AI. Plus, people recognize your ideas already in AI's output even without having to look up who the author of the source is.

Example: My framework journey (it was a weird mess)

1. Started my blog Blankpage about legal innovation because I wanted to understand this topic better.

2. Created working prototypes of UX-enhanced documents. I already had check-the-box privacy documents, but wanted to make the most out of them to drive my blog forward (when I do something, it needs to be useful). So I treated the blog like a sandbox and created prototypes of the Privacy Center and Privacy Notice. Since I'm a fan of uniformity and doing my own stuff, I automatically framed my prototypes in the spirit of Blankpage (that equals to integrating something inside your branding, but I didn't know what I was doing at the time). Plus I'm a fan of privacy, so I wanted to stand out (of course I needed to have a GIGANTIC Privacy Center in the website footer that nobody else has!).

3. Described the prototypes in the UX privacy portfolio and analyzed key design challenges for each prototype to make my thought process clearer for me and my readers. I didn't want readers to underestimate UX design (you'll see that no design element is accidental!). Also, AI came up with the metaphor "Compliance has become a chameleon" in Design Challenge 1. I liked it. At the same time, I wanted to have icons for each project to describe the type of project at a glance. Remembered the chameleon metaphor of the AI and created the Privacy Chameleon Points!

4. Synthesized learnings from the design challenges in a "Privacy Chameleon Framework" (Project 3) to get an overview. This step was basically like writing a paper and finding a taxonomy (a taxonomy in the business context is a service offering or pricing tiers). Saw that my gigantic Privacy Center and the (admittedly exotic) Privacy Notice were quite an excessive approach that only works if you have a privacy or empowerment branding (that's what I later called Privacy Differentiation). So I asked myself what other categories existed. Remembered a LinkedIn post that spoke about applying only minimal UX design to legal documents and went from one extreme to the other (that's what I later called Privacy Clarity). Asked AI to find me something between the minimal and the maximal category (that's what I later called Privacy Experience). So my framework ended up with 3 categories moving from minimal to maximal UX design: Privacy Clarity, Privacy Experience, and Privacy Differentiation. Iterated with AI many times on the categories to avoid overlaps or gaps. Finally, I remembered the Privacy Chameleon Points and named the whole thing "Privacy Chameleon Framework". DONE.

You see that there's no one way to create a framework. It can be carefully planned or a mess that crystallizes over time (more infos at steps 7 and 8 of my blog post How to write a truly innovative paper). The important thing is to start the journey and trust that everything will work out.

The job of any legal adviser is basically to reduce anxiety of their clients, providing "peace of mind". But when you start a unique practice style, clients might get even more anxious (the style is new and feels insecure) and maybe also uninterested (the style is new and the value might not land instantly). So we need to become even more strategic here.

Tip 9: Use your framework as an "anxiety reducer" first and as an "inspiration driver" second. If you show your framework around, make sure it's not just a theoretical, emotionless description. Use it as a strategic tool to manage the emotions of your audience. I got inspired from my own method I use when stressed: neutralize negative emotions first, focus on curiosity/excitement second (I needed a two-step process because it would be too big a leap to go straight from stress to excitement). Now let's apply that to your framework: start with sentences and designs that reduce anxiety. The audience we'll be relieved. And then stand out with your innovative approach. The audience we'll be inspired.

Anxiety and excitement are probably present in any audience, but you can still become more nuanced and build different versions of your framework for different audiences (like one for clients and another for future employers). You can boost the understanding of how your audience might feel by chatting with your AI team, especially with the in-house counsel mentor and the partner mentor.

Tip 10: Reduce your own anxiety before you reduce the anxiety of your audience. Starting a new practice style might make some of you anxious. Anxious that your style "doesn't look serious enough" compared to traditional practice or that you're not senior enough to start your own style. You need to be at ease with it. If you don't believe your style leads to the best problem solving, nobody else will buy it (literally).

If you need more general information about doing your own stuff, I suggest my other blog post Play your own game.

Step 7: Add a traditional practice style

Your style might already be thought-through and ready for the real world. But there might be cases where a traditional style is the better choice (like when it brings better results or the client has no interest in your style). So you need to remain flexible and master both.

I've been a fan of becoming a generalist with a specialization since my blog post How to start your career in IT law. Your unique practice style is like a specialization: it gives you a unique perspective for problem solving and a stronger branding. The traditional style is more like a general knowledge: it gives you a broader view on problem solving and increases your credibility, especially with more traditional people. So combine the best of both worlds.

Tip 11: Learn both styles in parallel. Since I'm a huge fan of starting a unique style already at a younger age, that means we need to learn both styles in parallel – not the traditional style first and then your own.

I have discussed this with my AI partner and he keeps insisting you need to learn the traditional style first to "earn the right to innovate". At least he's not a sycopantist... But I still believe that taking your career into your own hands and managing it like a business (see previous step 2) is the more strategic approach. Here's why:

• High chances, high reward: If everybody thinks they need to "earn the right to innovate", you're the one to stand out (especially if you have a working prototype to show off). It's not even "high risk, high reward". When you meet like-minded employers or clients, you can significantly increase your chances. With those people, it would be risky not to stand out.

• Understanding traditional styles by looking "behind" them: I have discussed the "Privacy Chameleon Framework" with my dear AI partner for many times. Eventually, I started to understand what business development in a law firm actually meant. And once I understood the business logic "behind" a practice style, all the other styles built on that same logic became much clearer, including traditional styles. Basically, you start to think like a "partner light" and that can have a massive impact on your career.

Step 8: Create a feedback loop to iterate your practice style

Until now, I mostly used my interests and knowledge to build the style. But just because I had some legal and UX design skills, it didn't mean that I thought like a real UX privacy designer with a wealth of experience. I had to go deeper and understand what kind of thinking was required to be good in my style. I was already a fan of "thinking about my thinking" (also called metacognition) from my other blog post How to develop IT-shaped thinking as a lawyer. So I made AI do a websearch on UX privacy (including all projects and the framework). Then I asked him to take on the role of a master who has been practicing my style for 20 years and has complete clarity on why it exists, what he sees that conventional practice misses, and what he fundamentally refuses to accept. Basically, I wanted to fine-tune my general entrepreneurial mindset to what was required by my specific style.

Give your AI this prompt to find clarity...

You are a master practitioner of [YOUR STYLE NAME]. You've been practicing this style for 20 years and have complete clarity on why it exists, what it sees that conventional practice misses, and what it fundamentally refuses to accept. Answer the following questions in first person, as that practitioner. Be specific.

• How do you see the world differently from a conventional lawyer?

• How do you see standard practice in your field and what's wrong with how things are usually done?

• What are your non-negotiables?

• What does "solving the problem well" mean to you, in a way it doesn't mean to most people in your field?

What came back was my own thinking – but at a master level. I asked AI more questions to fully immerse myself into the master mindset to see the world through his eyes. Finally, it felt like my own style and I found words to describe it.

At the end, what makes your style unique is the combination of everything that makes yourself unique. If you only have clarity on your knowledge and skills, you're not in full control of your style. All three layers need to be in sync: knowledge, skills, and mindset. If they're not, you might make decisions inconsistently or struggle to explain the reasoning behind your style. You might not even understand your own creation.

Tip 12: Update your mindset only when your style can survive. You don't want to update your mindset to a practice style that could never survive in the real world, so only do this once your style is thought-out well. However, don't wait too long either. Because updating the mindset to your style is a way to improve the style itself (it's like a feedback loop, but we'll come to that in a second).

After a while that I used the updated mindset, I saw new ways to improve my framework. This, in turn, made my thinking clearer, which made it easier to expose gaps in my skills and train them, which made it easier to update my framework, etc. A feedback loop was born between my mindset, skills, knowledge and my practice style. That's way I initially talked about a "prototype". It really is a journey of constant adaptation and improvement of the style to yourself and your surrounding.

Tip 13: Keep your style synced. If you see that you've changed as a person throughout the years, you need to update your style as well. Because you're style is an extension from your unique core. At the same time you need to keep it synced to your surrounding. If your clients or your future employer has no interest, you need to update your style. Because your foundational mindset is still the entrepreneurial mindset. It's only as long about you, as it also provides value to others.

Step 9: Build your branding

In the last step, you made AI analyze the underlying mindset of your style. But we can use this also as a great branding exercise. Because how AI sees your style gives you an indicator of how other people might see it. That's a branding topic.

Branding basics (ask your AI mentors for more):

• Goal: Define how your practice style is perceived and experienced by your audience.

• Make it authentic. Similar to the practice style, it's an extension of your personality.

• The value and how you differentiate yourself needs to be stated clearly.

• Keep the visuals and tone of voice consistent (online and offline).

Now let's go back to the AI and read the output again. Is there something that sounded weird and unfamiliar? Or a misunderstanding? You might want to change how you communicate that.

Tip 14: Frame the law as the primary part and the interdisciplinary element as "helping" the law. This sounds obvious, since we're still primarily lawyers. But at the beginning, I talked in a very theoretical way about "the intersection of IT law and UX design". My AI partner criticized that he wasn't sure if I was a lawyer with UX design skills or a designer that happened to know the law. So if the interdisciplinary element seems to prevail, you don't just risk misunderstandings, but you're also not able to charge the higher fees of a lawyer. From then on, I framed it as "IT law amplified by UX design". Design Challenge 2 of my portfolio on "Avoiding joint controllership using visual hierarchy" will tell you all about it.

Thanks for joining me in this journey. Part 2 will be about integrating and adapting the prototype to your workplace.

---

Hello, I'm Nadine Rinderknecht

Founder of Blankpage and UXprivacy

Experience in law firms and academia. Master of Law (University of Zurich), LL.M. TMT (Queen Mary University of London), and other stuff.

Connect with me on LinkedIn ☺

What's this blog about? Build your unique practice style and intellectual capital in IT law. Time to become a legal innovator. 

If this post was helpful, explore my other posts by clicking on this blue button:

Become an innovator