2012 InnovAction Awards announced!

For the eigth straight year, the InnovAction Awards have recognized outstanding innovation in the delivery of legal services, demonstrating what can happen when passionate professionals, with big ideas and strong convictions, resolve to create effective change. The College of Law Practice Management is please to announce that Littler Mendelson, PC and Seyfarth Shaw LLP are the two recipients of the coveted 2012 InnovAction Awards. 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.

The awards will be presented on Friday, October 26, at a special session during the 2012 Futures Conference, held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in Washington, DC.

There were a number of other impressive submissions from law firms and legal organizations this year, including Ulmer & Berne LLP, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, New Family, McAngus Goudelock and Courie, Lawyer Metrics LLC, Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP, Fish & Richardson, P.C. and Baker Donelson.  See here for more details on these initiatives.  For the InnovAction Hall of Fame which includes information on past winners, see here.