Good corporate lawyers understand that they can act as both a brake and an accelerator to their clients’ work. Traditionally, lawyers working for highly innovative clients spent more time pumping the brakes for fear that their clients were already flooring the accelerator; that’s how most of us were trained to respond when the risks and frameworks for counseling a path forward were difficult to ascertain — too many unknowns, not enough precedent.

Today’s innovative businesses require CLOs to both make do with existing legal frameworks and risks, as well as define and advance new ones when their clients’ inventions take them beyond what’s already known and accepted. This conversation will focus on the challenges, opportunities, and best practices that top CLOs use to steer client innovations that are bending or diverting from well-travelled paths, with a particular focus on how lawyers can partner with clients to accelerate new business advances by co-piloting the plane, even as it’s still being designed and built.