The three InnovAction Awards for 2008 have been announced.
InnovAction is a program of the College of Law Practice of Management. I am a trustee of COLPM and a Friend of InnovAction but had no role in or access to the judging process.
COLPM and InnovAction focus on law practice management writ large; the awards are not targeted at any one dimension such as technology or marketing. (e.g., one past award was for a new type of office design.) I was intrigued to see that all the awards relate to my favorite topics: 2 rest on technology and 1 on another and 1 on best practices.
From the InnovAction website the three winners are:
- Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP for its ValueChain Outsourcing Methodology for Visual Contracting:
“Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP was selected for its ValueChain outsourcing methodology. ValueChain is a unique system that visually displays client objectives, capabilities, opportunities and risks to Pillsbury lawyers. This helps the lawyers better understand the impact on clients’ business of outsourcing business functions such as HR, customer service, and IT accounting, as well as how the outsourcing of such operations can best be designed and structured. Pillsbury was recently granted a business method patent for ValueChain by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).”
- Mallesons Stephen Jaques for its PeopleFinder:
“Mallesons Stephen Jaques of Sydney, Australia was honored for PeopleFinder, the technological spearhead of ClientFirst, a program of continuous improvements to the firm’s standards of client service. PeopleFinder gives individuals who contact Mallesons using a BlackBerry the ability to determine whether the person they’re calling is available, and if not, when and where they can be found. PeopleFinder has rerouted more than 10,000 phone calls per month from voice mail to a person who can provide assistance. Mallesons also won an InnovAction Award in 2007 for its TalnetNet initiative.”
[See my blog post about PeopleFinder for more detail on it.] - Novus Law, LLC for its Document the E-Discovery Process from Collection to Production:
“For the first time in InnovAction’s history, an award was given to a non-law firm — in this case, a company that provides services to law firms. Novus Law, LLC, was selected for its documentation of the e-discovery process. Novus developed a program that documents and captures the e-discovery process (a significant cost in litigation) to give clients, attorneys and courts a reliable and predictable method for efficiently completing an important part of the litigation process.”
