Legal Research

Calling all innovative lawyers! Now?s your chance to get the recognition you deserve

By Dan Pinnington

Necessity breeds invention. From Procter & Gamble to IBM to Federal Express, from nylon to photocopiers to the electron microscope — some of the world’s most well-known companies and products were born in past recessions and depressions. The current economic crisis will be no exception — when times are tough, forward-thinking people will find ways to do things better. That applies especially to the practice of law.

Is your law practice or firm one of the profession’s leading lights of innovation? Have you or someone within your firm with vision and courage led a groundbreaking effort to practice law differently? Have you developed a new and better way of serving clients, a breakthrough way to find new business, a truly innovative way to value and sell your services? If so, then you deserve the recognition of lawyers and clients in your region and worldwide. And if so, the College of Law Practice Management (www.colpm.org) wants to hear from you.

The College of Law Practice Management is now accepting entries for the 2009 InnovAction Awards at www.innovactionaward.com. Awards are presented for law practice innovations within law firms and legal departments that have never been done previously, or that take an existing innovation to the next level of originality and performance.

See the Hall of Fame for previous winners.

The goal of the Awards is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when passionate professionals with big ideas are determined to solve the business challenges faced in today’s competitive markets. Award entries will be judged on the basis of four primary criteria:

• Absence of precedent (never been done or done quite this way before)
• Evidence of action (the innovative idea was transformed into action and not merely reflective of best intentions)
• Effectiveness of innovation (there is some measurable outcome that indicates the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do)
• Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry.

Complete contest rules and application forms can be found at http://www.innovationaward.com.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on February 25, 2009 (boomark / email).