Innovation Certificate Program
An immersive innovation training program for law firm leaders, combining rigorous instruction on design thinking, organizational design, behavioral science, and the practical application of AI skills.
Dechert, in partnership with the firm's Director of Innovation. Each ICP cohort combined lawyers and business services professionals from practice groups and business units around the firm, so each annual class joined an expansive, multidisciplinary innovation network the firm could tap for strategic initiatives.
We designed the curriculum in close collaboration with the Director of Innovation and led the instruction for five years. The program ran as three modules over three months, moving each cohort from design-thinking and organizational-design instruction, through a two-day in-person design sprint, to the realities of implementing a new idea inside a law firm. Every class worked a different high-level design challenge directly relevant to the firm.
200+ alumni across the firm's practice groups, offices, and business services teams: a self-sustaining innovation network that became a real organizational asset. The approach proved durable enough that when AI emerged as the firm's central strategic concern in late 2025, the same model was adapted directly into an AI Innovation Certificate Program in Year 6.