Is Your Law Firm Ready for a Thought Experiment?
Why law firms need new strategic tools
Most law firm strategic plans still look and feel like static documents: a partner retreat, a SWOT analysis, financial projections, and a list of initiatives that quietly gather dust in a drawer. That approach is misaligned with a legal market defined by volatile regulation, client consolidation, alternative legal service providers, and rapid advances in automation and AI.
Worse yet, the focus of traditional law firm strategic planning has often been inward rather than outward, failing to include a thorough understanding of the realities and risks of the fast-changing legal, economic, and geopolitical forces and uncertainties that a law firm’s clients face.
Norman K. Clark and Daniel E. Miller argue in From Legal Advisors to Strategic Risk Partners that firms must modernize their approach to planning and managing strategy. They emphasize the need for multidisciplinary collaboration, measurable objectives tied to client outcomes, and governance that supports experimentation and course correction rather than rigid adherence to a fixed plan. In other words, the planning process itself must become more dynamic, imaginative, client-inclusive, and evidence‑informed.
Strategic thought experiments offer a way to enhance the law firm planning toolkit. Borrowed from fields as diverse as physics, economics, and organizational behavior, they enable leaders to systematically explore “what-if” futures and stress-test strategies without the cost, delay, or risk of full-scale pilots.
What is a thought experiment?
A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario using logic and existing knowledge to explore possible outcomes, test assumptions, or reveal contradictions. In scenario planning research, scenarios themselves are described as a specialized form of thought experiment: imaginative but disciplined explorations of what could happen, not just what is most likely.
The term thought experiment may be familiar to those knowledgeable about the work of the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955). He is strongly associated with thought experiments because he relied on them extensively in developing the theory of relativity and other ideas. Famous examples include imagining riding alongside a beam of light or various setups to probe the nature of time, simultaneity, and, later, quantum phenomena. He helped popularize the use of Gedankenexperimente in physics, but he did not invent the term itself, which is credited to the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted around 1811–1812. Later, Ernst Mach popularized the word in his writings, and an 1897 English translation of one of Mach’s papers introduced thought experiment as a direct calque into English.
Einstein did not offer a single formal definition, but he described a thought experiment (Gedankenexperiment) as an imagined, conceptually precise scenario used to explore the consequences of physical laws when real experiments are impractical or impossible. In a 1922 lecture, for example, he recounted one such mental experiment. Sitting in the Bern patent office, he imagined a man falling freely and realized “he would not feel his weight,” calling it a “simple thought experiment” that deeply impressed him and led him toward his theory of gravity. Accounts of Einstein’s work emphasize that these were carefully constructed scenarios that respected what is in principle measurable; they were not fantasies but tools “to explore the consequences of physical laws,” such as imagining riding on a light wave or being in an accelerating elevator.
Modern explanations of Einstein’s practice summarize his view this way: he builds real‑world, often vivid situations (trains, elevators, falling painters, lightning strikes) in his mind. Einstein would picture a concrete scene — for example, riding on a train while two lightning bolts strike, or chasing alongside a beam of light — and then ask, “If the laws of physics are right, what must happen in this situation?” He treated these scenes almost like courtroom hypotheticals: they had to be realistic in principle, respect known facts, and be internally consistent, even though they only existed in his imagination. In this way, he used thought experiments to test whether a theory’s predictions remain consistent, to reveal new effects, or to show that apparently different situations are physically equivalent. In that sense, an Einsteinian thought experiment is a rigorous mental laboratory where logic and physical principles are applied to imagined but well‑specified circumstances.
Bringing Einstein into your law firm
Transposed into a law firm setting, a strategic thought experiment is a structured mental simulation of future states of the firm and its clients. It is:
Anchored in real drivers of change (regulation, technology, client strategy, competition)
Designed to illuminate strategic options, risks, and trade‑offs
Conducted in a way that produces tangible outputs to guide future responses to the legal, regulatory, economic, and geopolitical environments in which the law firm and its clients will need to function.
Lessons from other business and government
Outside the legal profession, thought experiments already play a role in several planning and forecasting practices, especially in business and at the highest levels of government
In scenario planning, well-crafted, fact-based scenarios enable decision‑makers to conduct thought experiments on complex systems, exploring possible and probable futures beyond the reach of linear forecasts. By narrating alternative futures, organizations can challenge their dominant mental models, assumptions, and paradigms, and develop more robust strategies.
Startups and investors often use thought experiments to de‑risk strategies by asking structured questions such as What would have to be true for this to work? or What if a dominant competitor of ours decided to give this away for free? These exercises clarify assumptions and potential risks, map realistic responses and options, and highlight possible stress tests to run before committing serious capital and management attention to the idea. The goal is not to predict the future perfectly but to detect hidden risks, generate creative options, and sharpen the organization’s priorities.
Several themes have emerged from the use of thought experiments in business and government planning:
Thought experiments are inexpensive and faster than large-scale empirical or pilot projects. This makes them a good prelude to—and in some cases a more cost-effective alternative to—a pilot project.
They are especially valuable when data is scarce, inconsistent, or lagging
They help teams see beyond their assumptions, paradigms, and habitual response patterns.
Their value depends on disciplined framing and rigorous reasoning, not on creativity or imagination.
These same features make them attractive for law firm strategy, where partners often have strong intuitions but limited time or resources for formal research to confirm them. As in business and government, the positive return on a law firm’s investment in a strategic thought experiment about a possible future issue can be enormous for anticipating change, confirming and monitoring early-warning indicators, evaluating options, and avoiding opportunity costs from ineffective responses.
Connecting thought experiments to law firm strategy
Law firms face decisions that combine high uncertainty, long time horizons, and irreversible investment: entering or exiting practice areas, opening offices, adopting new technology platforms, changing leverage models, or repositioning the firm around client industries and risk themes.
So do their clients.
Clark and Miller’s call for firms to act as strategic risk partners to clients poses a dual challenge: firms must help clients navigate uncertainty while redesigning their own businesses for a future in which “good legal work is not good enough.” Strategic thought experiments can support both dimensions.
On the client‑facing side, they help partners anticipate the risk environment their clients will inhabit and design services that integrate legal, strategic, and operational perspectives. Even today, business leaders are more concerned about the practical implications of economic and geopolitical risks than about the law that will govern the initiative. A law firm that can deliver sound legal advice and guide its clients through thought experiments to test assumptions, clarify risks, and focus on likely legal implications will be viewed by its clients as delivering substantial added value. This can create a compelling competitive advantage over law firms that remain stuck in an outdated traditional concept of the scope and depth of legal services.
Designing high‑quality thought experiments for law firms
Drawing on management research and scenario planning practice, high‑quality thought experiments for law firms share several key characteristics.
Clear definition of the issue
Each exercise begins with a specific strategic question, for example:
How might our top 20 clients' adoption of generative AI change their needs for our services and their expectations for our service-delivery capabilities over the next five years?
Under what future conditions would our current leverage and pricing models become unsustainable?
What would it take for us to become the default strategic risk partner for the top-50 companies in a chosen industry?
Defined boundaries and assumptions
A thought experiment is not unrestrained brainstorming or “make-a-wish” fantasizing. Rather, it is a well-constructed arena with clearly defined parameters and variables, such as:
Time horizon (e.g., five or ten years)
Scope (practice group, office, firm‑wide, client business sector)
Fixed parameters (e.g., regulatory environment, capital structure)
Variables open to change (geopolitical upheavals, impacts on investments and other business activities, technology-related issues, possible significant regulatory fluctuations).
Structured factually-based narrative scenarios
This is likely the most critical step in a thought experiment. Participants construct one or more narrative scenarios that pose the central question under different combinations of variables. Some of the information needed to build the scenarios will be available in the law firm; much of it will require references to external sources. Constructing a narrative scenario is usually beyond the in-house resources of all but the largest law firms. Therefore, we recommend that scenario structuring and refinement be facilitated and supported by an external advisor, such as Walker Clark LLC.
As a very rough example, which would, of course, require further refinement in a real-life thought experiment, here is a scenario outlined by Clark and Miller in From Legal Advisors to Strategic Risk Partners:
Thought Experiment 3: reconstruction and integration surge
By 2035, Montenegro and Albania have entered the EU, while Ukraine and Moldova are poised to do so within the next two years. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North Macedonia have partnerships with the EU and are expecting to become member states in the future.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has concluded with some minor territorial concessions to Russia. Both Belarus and Russia have experienced regime changes, and while Belarus has developed a history of cooperation with the EU, Russia is still wary of close cooperation with the West. Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and hybrid warfare elsewhere in Europe have ceased. Ukraine continues to make great strides in constructing a democratic and open society.
Far-right parties in the EU have been discredited, and EU integration is progressing, especially in the core economies, including Poland, that form the advanced vanguard of countries in the EU’s two-speed framework.
NATO remains strong, especially after the US abandoned its isolationist policies before entering the new decade. China is no longer threatening Taiwan with annexation, but the Chinese economy is on a par with the economies of the EU and the US. The Chinese Communist Party is slowly introducing democratizing measures, which have created a positive atmosphere that has contributed to economic success.
Tensions in the Middle East have subsided slightly, and migrants from the Eastern Mediterranean continue to cross into Europe. Defense investment remains high due to uncertainty in the Middle East, NATO modernization efforts, and the need to replenish weapons conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe depleted.
Investment from EU Cohesion Funds, the European Regional Development Fund, and other infrastructure, environmental, and economic development mechanisms in the newly admitted member states is high. The EU also is investing in countries with partnerships with the EU, particularly in South America.
CEE and the Balkans are regions experiencing significant construction and reform. Investment flows into transport corridors, energy systems, defense-industrial capacity, and both digital and green projects. EU funding is extensive and is tied to governance reforms, anti-corruption measures, and ESG standards. Domestic politics often remain divided, depending on the country, but the overall trend is toward strengthening the rule of law and institutional consolidation because of EU conditions and investor expectations.
AI has contributed to the expanding world economy. Despite disruption in some professions, the dire predictions of widespread unemployment have not materialized.
Implications for legal services
In the reconstruction and integration surge scenario, legal markets in CEE and the Balkans are thriving but challenging:
Since the newly admitted EU states and those seeking admission are at peace and have EU investment, their economies are expanding rapidly. International businesses are locating and expanding in the area, taking advantage of temporarily inexpensive real estate and an underemployed yet educated population.
There are high volumes of project finance, PPP, and concession work in infrastructure, energy, housing, and digital networks that benefit from complex EU funding and state aid overlays.
Extensive requests arrive for advice on aligning with the EU's acquis communautaire, navigating regulatory reforms, and undertaking institution-building in the Western Balkans and Ukraine, including drafting legislation and establishing regulators.
Investment in defense infrastructure in the area is high, as most countries in CEE and the Balkans, including those that are not full NATO members, bring their defense capabilities up to NATO standards.
Ukraine's defense industry and high-tech markets are thriving and expanding into CEE, especially the Balkans. Rare-earth extraction in Ukraine is expanding.
Intense competition exists among law firms—local, regional, and global—for mandates related to reconstruction and integration, but clients expect deep local knowledge, EU‑law expertise, and multidisciplinary teams.
AI, ESG, and data regulation remain important as countries incorporate these frameworks into reconstruction and investment initiatives.
Examples of law firm risk-management and contingency planning
Under this scenario, the client‑relations model must support increased scale and complexity in client needs and expectations for legal services:
Multidisciplinary sector teams) in infrastructure, energy, and technology become growth engines that coordinate with cross-border teams and use AI-enabled tools to manage vast flows of documents and regulatory inputs.
Strategic client relationship management is essential for retaining key investors and IFIs that manage multiple projects across the region. Regular risk briefings and scenario sessions focus on implementation risks, governance, and social impacts.
Firm‑level risk management must keep pace with rapid growth to control cyber risk, to maintain both AML and sanctions standards in high‑volume environments, and to manage talent and culture as teams expand the international reach of their expertise.
Three-year planning for firms within a reconstruction and integration surge context should consider:
How can we expand without sacrificing quality and independence?
Are we in the right sectors and locations?
Have we sufficiently invested in project management, technology, and non-lawyer professionals?
How will we handle conflicts and ethics when advising both states and private investors on the same reform and reconstruction programs?
Linking today to the future
Exploring all the possible cause-and-effect relationships is important, as is assessing their probability and the risks or opportunities posed by each consequence. During a thought experiment for this “reconstruction and integration surge” scenario, a law firm might identify first-, second-, and third-order effects—and perhaps even out to the fifth-order in accordance with the Toyoda Method of Ask Why Five Times—in existing structures and functions in the firm.
For example:
What will be the chain of impacts and implications for:
Revenue mix and profitability?
Client relationships and expectations?
Talent model, skills, and culture?
Technology, data, and process infrastructure?
Governance and decision rights?
What contingency structures and plans should be created and documented now to be prepared should the scenario manifest itself in the future?
What early-warning indicators will signal that the change is likely to happen or is already underway?
How often should we revisit our thought experiment and its conclusions?
Integrating thought experiments into the planning cycle
To move beyond one‑off planning retreats and hurried end-of-the-year meetings, both of which usually are relatively unproductive, firms can embed strategic thought experiments into a continuous review and planning rhythm that becomes part of the law firm’s ongoing life, rather than special events that are often force-fitted into the calendar. For example:
Annual strategy cycle: Use two or three major thought experiments at the outset of planning to challenge assumptions and refine plans.
Practice group reviews: Ask each group to run a focused thought experiment about its competitive positioning and client segment over the next three years.
Client‑team sessions: Co‑create thought experiments with key clients to assess the potential impact of the risk environment on their growth strategies, then jointly explore how the firm can add differentiated value as a strategic risk partner.
Governance and risk committees: Use thought experiments to stress-test proposed policies and investments under adverse scenarios before implementation.
Obtaining the best results from thought experiments requires discipline, which comes from capturing outputs in a consistent format: the central question, key assumptions, scenario narratives, mapped consequences, and resulting strategic options and tests.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Thought experiments are—or, at least, should be—mentally stimulating, even exciting, experiences. This intellectual energy can sometimes push participants beyond fact-based boundaries into aspirational thinking. This is why an experienced external facilitator is usually a wise investment, to detect early signs that the discussion is beginning to wander out of bounds and to guide participants back. Some of the most common pitfalls are:
Unbounded fantasy: Scenarios drift into science fiction, disconnected from plausible drivers. This can be avoided by anchoring the scenarios in credible trends and potential uncertainties and by periodically reconfirming them.
Confirmation bias: There is a natural tendency among those new to thought experiments to design futures that assume present paradigms will continue with little or no change. Not surprisingly, this leads to conclusions that merely confirm present assumptions rather than test them. This can be mitigated by designing “disconfirming” thought experiments that intentionally stress or contradict core assumptions.
Lack of translation: Insights remain at the level of interesting stories with no impact on decisions. This can lead to conclusions that say, in essence: Now, isn’t that interesting? We will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. The problem is that when the group “arrives at the bridge,” it will likely have been swept away by the torrents of change envisioned by the scenario. This lack of translation from situations to actions can be avoided by requiring each thought experiment to produce explicit potential strategic responses and early indicators of impending change.
The mindset shift: from plans to living strategy
Ultimately, adopting strategic thought experiments is less about adding another workshop exercise and more about shifting how partners think about strategy. Clark and Miller emphasize that firms need “living strategies” with governance that supports experimentation, learning, and course correction. Thought experiments are a natural fit for this mindset because they:
Make discussions about uncertainty and multiple—sometimes seemingly contradictory—futures part of the strategy development for themselves and their clients
Reward curiosity and constructive challenge, rather than reliance on outdated paradigms and assumptions that might undermine the firm’s ability to respond to change
Encourage cross‑disciplinary thinking
Generate portfolios of options instead of a rigid, inflexible set of goals and actions.
When combined with regular strategic reviews, closer communication and involvement in clients’ business objectives and risks, and performance metrics, strategic thought experiments can help law firms move closer to the role many general counsel say they want their outside law firms to play: not just technical legal experts but trusted partners in managing strategic risk.
By borrowing and adapting thought‑experiment practices from other domains—management research, startups, marketing, and scenario planning—law firms can modernize their strategic planning and better align their futures with those of their clients.
How Walker Clark LLC can help
To explore the potential of strategic thought experiments for your firm and your clients, schedule a 30-minute complimentary, confidential conversation with a senior Walker Clark advisor. Send an e-mail to strategy@walkerclark.com.
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