colpm

InnovAction Entry by Practical Law Company

Creating Efficiency for business lawyers submitted by Practical Law Company, Inc.

 

Practical Law Company (PLC) is changing the way business lawyers work.  We employ attorneys with significant experience practicing with the world’s leading law firms and legal departments (e.g. Davis Polk, Skadden, Pfizer, Sullivan & Cromwell) to provide practical, up-to-date resources that help business lawyers practice more efficiently and provide greater value to clients.
 

Traditional legal publishers are not meeting the needs of transactional lawyers, especially in this climate where innovation and delivering greater value is of critical importance. PLC provides the practical, generic level of information needed by all business lawyers that allows them to get up to speed quickly, stop reinventing the wheel and focus on client and firm specific work.  We launched our first US services in December 2009 to wide market acceptance – not only to the services themselves, but also to our core principles of innovation, value and quality.  PLC began in the UK in 1990.

InnovAction Award Entry by Novus Law

Novus Q™ – A Quality Management System for Document Review submitted by Novus Law, LLC

 

Quality management related sanctions for e-discovery and document review mismanagement cost law firms and their clients more than $1.5 billion annually. At Novus Law, we consider that to be too much risk, too much money and totally unnecessary.

 

When we spoke with litigators and asked, “What is it about the document review process that “keeps you up at night?”, they responded, 1) the inadvertent production of privileged documents, 2) an incorrect understanding of what’s important, thus “missing the all-important hot document”, and 3) inconsistencies in the procedures used by reviewers – “it won’t be defensible in front of the judge”.

 

Novus Law researched the best quality management systems in the world from the manufacturing, supply chain, healthcare, professional services and other process-focused industries, and created an unparalleled quality management system for document management review and analysis called Novus Q™.  The first time Novus Q™ was used it yielded a 33% improvement in accuracy over industry standard results based on an independent quality review audit, and within months Novus Q™ was consistently delivering accuracy rates for document review greater than 99%.  These results are unheard of in the legal industry and are setting a new standard for quality.

InnovAction Award Entry by New Family Organization

Family, Justice and Law submitted by New Family Organization

 

Advocate Irit Rosenblum broke fresh ground defending a universal right to family as intrinsic to the practice of law. Rosenblum pioneered a new sphere of legal rights surrounding the family based on the conviction that the rights to marry, divorce, have children, bequeath and inherit assets, and conduct family life are human rights and must be attainable to all regardless of faith, nationality, sexual orientation or status.

She founded New Family to fill a critical gap in the practice of law in Israel: to attain the right of every individual to establish a family and to exercise equal rights within it. For the 2 million people in Israel who are subject to discrimination due to family status, New Family’s achievements have been invaluable.

A central aspect of Rosenblum’s work is innovating legal solutions that circumvent or mitigate infringements on rights. Rosenblum pioneered contractual marriage and Domestic Partnership Identification Cards, which confer couples that cannot legally marry or do not wish to marry by the required religious rites legal status and rights equal to married couples.

InnovAction Entry by Morrison & Foerster LLP

Recruiting Campaign by Morrison & Foerster LLP

 

 

Over the last two years, we have developed a distinctive (if sometimes controversial, for those not part of our target audience) recruiting positioning for MoFo that capitalizes on our unique culture (described as our “mofo mojo”).  Our MoFo mojo sets us apart from other large law firms.  This concept comes to life on our Careers website (www.mofomojo.com) and through our recruiting brochures, invitations, advertisements, electronic banners and giveaways.  This recruiting season, we chose to focus on two particular aspects of our culture and did so through two brochures (our Labels brochure and our Pigeonholed brochure) and through a series of collateral materials.

InnovAction Entry by Pro Bono Net

Pro Bono Manager by Pro Bono Net

 

Pro bono work is critical to law firms as well as to the constituents that they serve. Pro bono work helps firms differentiate themselves, attract and develop attorneys and increase attorneys’ satisfaction with their work. In most firms, managing pro bono work is fraught with administrative and reporting challenges costing the firm billable time and resources. Effective management and reporting tools are required if firms are to meet their altruistic and business goals.

To meet these challenges, Pro Bono Net, a nonprofit leader in innovative programs that increase access to justice, created Pro Bono Manager. Pro Bono Manager, developed with leading law firms, is a customized, hosted pro bono practice management system that helps firms increase pro bono participation, manage pro bono caseloads more efficiently and raise internal and external awareness of pro bono efforts. Leveraging Pro Bono Net’s expertise in using technology to support pro bono attorneys, Pro Bono Manager takes advantage of a nationwide network of public interest legal groups to provide access to materials, volunteer opportunities, training events and relevant news. The service was developed in part with a grant from the Gates Foundation, and is currently in use at eight leading law firms.

InnovAction Entry by Heritage Law

Innovative Law Firm Model by Heritage Law

 

We have an innovative model of legal practice, centered on the concept of how to enable both work life balance for our staff and maintain top service levels for our clients. We are currently an all-female firm, specializing in wills and estates, family law and mediation, whose four lawyers and six support staff all work as independent contractors, primarily from their homes. Technology plays a critical role in our success.

 

Heritage Law is “paperless” and utilizes practice management software to centrally manage billing, time tracking, matter information, contacts, appointments, documents and document assembly. All staff log into one remote, secure server over the internet which is a repository for all firm data and software applications. We have a VOIP phone system which allows ten staff in ten different locations to use the same phone line and system.

 

We have a remote answering service which answers client calls during the business day if a staff member is out of the office and routes the message to the appropriate person to deal with. All staff have a computer, high speed internet, a VOIP phone and a scanner at their home offices.

InnovAction Entry from Firmex Inc.

Firmex Virtual Deal Room by Firmex Inc.

 

Firmex is the first commercially available Software as a Service product that:

1) Makes running a corporate transaction greatly more organized and efficient from start to finish,

2) Gives all parties to a transaction far more accessible and convenient access to documents relevant to their business, and

3) Is branded with the name and graphics of the law firm — if the licensee is a law firm, this branding by the law firm makes a strong marketing statement to all other collaborating users, including clients and other advisors.

 

The initial prototype was developed by Version 5.1 Inc. (a website developer) under the guidance of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. In 2006, Version 5.1 incorporated Firmex Inc to develop and capitalize a software company to market a commercial product.

 

Over 230 organizations have licensed the Firmex product since January 2007 (many of which are law firms in North America and in several offshore countries) and they collectively and continually give feedback and input to the product’s ongoing evolution. In the space of two years, the Firmex product, using the power of Web 2.0 technology, has transformed transactional work, providing corporate attorneys and their clients with increased control, organization and satisfaction.

InnovAction Entry by Dynamic Lawyers Ltd., Carabash Law

www.DynamicLawyers.com 

 

Straight after getting called to the bar, I developed a website called www.DynamicLawyers.com to improve access to justice for everyday people in Toronto, Canada.  www.DynamicLawyers.com allows users to freely and anonymously post their legal issue(s) online and receive free information and quotes from local lawyers practicing in the area of law required. This website has definite advantages over traditional methods of finding a lawyer. Lawyers registered on the compete against each other, pitching their services in an effort to be retained by the user. www.DynamicLawyers.com charges lawyers a modest monthly fee of only $50 to access and respond to the posts. Users have no obligation to select or follow up with a lawyer. Overall, www.DynamicLawyers.com is a novel website that helps everyday people find the right local lawyer for the right price while simultaneously giving lawyers access to people looking for their services.

InnovAction Entries Are In

The deadline for submitting an entry for the 2009 InnovAction Awards was June 1, 2009.  We asked applicants to provide a summary that we could make public, motivated in part by our interest in blogging about each to share with the legal profession innovation inspiration.

Starting today, we are posting some of our entries daily. Other than copy edits and adding links, we are posting them as submitted. The Award winner or winners will be announced in a mid-July press release and the Awards will be presented at the 2009 Futures Conference held in conjunction with the College's Annual Meeting September 25 & 26 in Denver, CO.

College Launches 2009 InnovAction Awards with a new Category!

The College of Law Practice Management is excited to launch the 2009 InnovAction Awards.  We are looking for lawyers, law firms and other deliverers of legal services who are engaged in some extraordinary innovative efforts.  The goal of the Awards is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when passionate professionals with big ideas are determined to solve the business challenges faced in today's competitive markets. 

Award entries will be judged on the basis of four primary criteria:

• Absence of precedent (never been done or done quite this way before)
• Evidence of action (the innovative idea was transformed into action and not merely reflective of best intentions)
• Effectiveness of innovation (there is some measurable outcome that indicates the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do)
• Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry.

And, for the first time, the InnovAction Awards will present Honorable Mentions to entries who have taken an existing innovation in the practice of law, transformed it in a unique and valuable way, and made it even better than before.  In the past, the InnovAction judges have seen several entrants who've taken an innovative idea to the next level and created distinct business advantages.  In 2009, we want to honor them for their vision.

For more information on the InnovAction Awards and to download an application, please visit www.innovactionaward.com or contact the College of Law Practice Management at 720-271-7015 or via e-mail at colpm@comcast.net.