The College of Law Practice Management (COLPM), an organization that recognizes excellence in law practice management, is calling for entries for the 2012 InnovAction Awards. This is a world-wide search for lawyers, law firms, law departments and others in the legal services field that have invented or successfully applied new business practices to the delivery of legal services. In its first six years, the InnovAction program has awarded entities from six countries around the world. You can view the winners at the Hall of Fame.
2012 InnovAction Award nominations are due by June 15 and winners will be encouraged to receive their InnovAction Awards in person at the 2012 Futures Conference held in conjunction with the College's Annual Meeting in October in Washington, DC. Winners will be invited to make a presentation regarding their innovations as part of the conference.
This year, the InnovAction Awards welcome a new Chair, Tim Corcoran, who is taking over from past Chair, Jordan Furlong. You can contact Tim with questions or interest in the awards. We recently caught up with Tim who shared some more insights about the 2012 InnovAction Award program and his roles as award chair.
About his new role: "As award chair I am always on the lookout for innovative ideas and practices in use in the legal marketplace and encouraging innovative thinkers to submit their idea for recognition. I am not a judge myself, but I feel no guilt flooding the judges' in boxes with a steady stream of innovative practices!"
About the 2012 award: There are a number of prestigious awards in the legal marketplace, in the US and UK and elsewhere, and the winners of these often contain some element of innovation as a differentiator. However, the InnovAction awards are unique in that the primary selection criteria are innovation and impact. The objective is to highlight novel approaches to law practice that improve client satisfaction, create efficiencies, save money, and improve quality of the services. There are many good ideas out there, but we like to honor those that have been successfully implemented and that have made a measurable positive impact.
About 2012 submission trends: A number of the submissions we've seen this year continue the trend of adapting tools and processes from outside the legal profession. No question one can't merely drop in some business approach that works in a completely unrelated field, but law firms and service providers have become quite adept at tweaking successful approaches for the unique culture of law practice. That said, many clients -- even in-house counsel -- define themselves as businesspeople first, so they welcome modern business practices and tools.
The submission deadline for a 2012 InnovAction Award entry is June 15th so there are still a couple of days remaining to demonstrate how you innovate law practice.
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