Managing by walking around used to be standard practice. But with remote work, Zoom, and billable hour pressure, the concept lost some of its luster .
But with AI we may need it more than ever. When we rely only on LLMs to make decisions and summarize work, we lose something critical: the senior lawyer who stops by, asks questions, catches problems and offers ideas and solutions.
I had a practice group leader who walked the halls every afternoon. At the time, we all thought he was just checking to see who left early. Maybe. But in hindsight he stopped, he asked what we were up to, he listened. And he made all of us better lawyers.
Here is my post for Above the Law on why MBWA matters more than ever in the age of AI.