Almost all players in the legal market talk about innovation. Law firms start incubators, clients demand innovation, and providers promote their innovative solutions. But just what is innovation, who’s doing it, and how do rank and file legal market workers handle it?
[Jean O’Grady and I jointly prepared this post. She published a similar post to this earlier today.
I will participate in innovation sessions at both ILTACon 2019 and American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) 2019 annual conference. For sessions at both (details below), the organizers and panelists agreed that a “bottoms up” survey would be a great input.
So I am asking readers to participate by clicking here. Even if you do not plan to attend either conference, we welcome and encourage you to participate.
BACKGROUND – CONFERENCE SESSIONS PROMPT THE SURVEY: Here are the sessions in which I am participating:
- At ILTACon, I will facilitate an innovation workshop, one of a four-part series on innovating in law firms. The conference takes place August 18-22, 2019 in Orlando; the four sessions are on each of Monday through Thursday.
- I will be a panelist on Sunday (not a typo – yes, Sunday), July 14, at 11:30am in Washington, DC at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual conference. The session is Hot Topic: Embracing Sustainable Innovation Initiatives to Build a Future-Focused Library.
THE SURVEY: As we prepared for our session, we agreed that we wanted to understand innovation from the bottom up. That is, unlike many surveys, which target law firm management or people with innovation in their title, we wanted to hear from a broad cross-section of line managers across organization types and functions. We keep the questions simple:
- Title
- Organization type and size
- Is there an innovation initiative, and if yes, describe it.
- Did you initiate or collaborate on innovation, and if yes, describe it.
- What challenges do you face in innovating?
- What is the biggest “innovation” you have been been involved in?
- Ignoring any constraints, what one innovation project you do?
- Will you attend the ILTA or AALL conferences?
PLEASE TAKE THE SURVEY: We think – with your help – that this survey will provide good insight on what’s really happening with innovation and what the challenges are in doing it. To participate, click here to go to Survey Monkey.
I WILL PUBLISH RESULTS. After the conferences, I will publish the results and my analysis of them here and include any commentary my co-panelists care to offer. Look for a post at the end of August or in September.