The College of Law Practice Management announced this week the winners of the 2012 InnovAction Awards. (I am a COLPM trustee.) InnovAction honors innovation in law practice management.
This year, two law firms were honored, quoting from the College’s awards page:
“Littler was selected for Littler CaseSmart™. In response to a client challenge, Littler Mendelson developed Littler CaseSmart™, a solution that combines a re‐engineered legal process (deployed in a client‐dedicated, team‐based model) that is built on a technology platform that allows for the strategic management of a high ‐volume of administrative agency charges (such as federal, state, and local charges of discrimination), at a fixed, per‐charge fee. Littler CaseSmart™ provides transparent, privileged, and real‐time online access to the status of the client’s legal matters, as well as a dashboard of key performance indicators, visual graphics, and reports. The Littler CaseSmart™ approach completely re‐engineers the way in which matters are handled, maximizing the use of technology to anticipate attorney needs as they conduct research, prepare responsive documentation and perform legal and risk analysis in order to enhance efficiency while maintaining firm profitability.”
“Seyfarth Shaw was selected for its SeyfarthLean program. Well before the fall of the financial markets, Seyfarth leadership anticipated the need for better ways for a law firm to meet its clients’ rapidly evolving needs for value, efficiency and continued high quality of legal services. Based on that simple goal, we have become the only large law firm to build a distinctive client service model – called SeyfarthLean – that combines the core principles of Lean Six Sigma with robust technology, knowledge management, process management techniques, alternative fee structures and practical tools. The broad, systemic use of such a model across multiple practice areas is unique to the legal profession and reflects a fundamentally different way of thinking about how to deliver legal services.”
Among the other InnovAction award submissions (PDF) were two other law firms that focus on process improvement and/or project management: Baker Donelson created BakerManage, “a patent pending system that compliments the legal expertise of our attorneys by providing them with the tools to be better project managers” and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP created its “Legal Project Management (LPM) program [to provide] training and implementation tools for lawyers and clients to more efficiently and effectively deliver legal services.”
For more information on the awards:
