On Thursday evening, ILTA hosted it's 2nd annual Distinguished Peer Awards to honor the achievements of those ILTA members and vendors who are making technology work for the legal profession. The Peer Awards, which included 23 categories across individuals, vendors and regions, peers and organizations, was announced at the annual awards dinner as part of ILTA’s 2011 annual educational conference.
All of the short-list nominees were impressive and you can find the complete list here. Below is a list of winners and their award entries. We will have a complete ILTA photo album (check out the award pictures) online shortly. And the winners are:
PEER AWARDS
Communications Technologies Award
Joy Heath Rush, Director of Enterprise Multimedia Services at Sidley Austin LLP, has played a pivotal role over the past 15 months in successfully delivering nearly 35 state-of-the-art conference rooms, including five optimized high-definition videoconferencing spaces, a completely self-hosted and self-managed video bridging infrastructure, a fully functional desktop videoconferencing solution, as well as the people and processes to support them.
Desktop and Application Services Award
Kara Portwood, Practice Area Solutions Consultant at Armstrong Teasdale LLP, continuously brings value to the firm’s clients by facilitating desktop technology best practices. She often works with clients to help with collaboration, solve technology issues and contribute to building successful business relationships.
Emerging Technologies Award
Bill Caraher, Chief Information Officer at von Briesen & Roper, s.c., realized the vision of his managing partner and created a modular, social intranet like iGoogle. Using the latest in emerging and Open Source technology, Bill and his team created a graphically stunning, user-customizable intranet with easily editable portals. The intranet links to DMS documents, has external RSS content and hosts its own internal “social” platform with a Twitter-like microblog, a Craigslist forum and Facebook\Twitter iGoogle gadgets.
Enterprise Content Management Award
Ben Weinberger, currently with Bond Pearce LLP, while serving as Chief Information Officer at Lathrop & Gage LLP, was responsible for migrating the firm to a more robust matter-centric content management system. Consolidating 10 separate databases into a single DB and offering improved collaboration and workflow capabilities, the project achieved 100 % ROI in less than two years.
Financial Management Award
Tanielle Huff, Financial Systems Administrator at K&L Gates LLP, was responsible for upgrading the cost recovery systems while integrating a mix of systems and processes left over from a series of mergers and acquisitions. This project involved the firmwide implementation of a standardized cost recovery platform, including servers, software and databases, as well as all hardware attached to copiers, fax machines and phone switches, and it was successfully completed in five weeks.
Knowledge Management Award
Scott Rechtschaffen, Chief Knowledge Officer at Littler Mendelson P.C., consistently leverages his keen understanding of law firm business and legal practice to deliver innovative, cost-effective, high-quality knowledge management solutions for internal and client-facing use. Scott founded the firm’s knowledge management department and has developed it to become the largest KM department of any U.S. law firm. He was also one of the first to create client-facing knowledge management systems to help support the needs of clients.
Law Department Award {TIE}
Larry Gianneschi, Legal Information and Technology Manager at Colgate-Palmolive Company, was responsible for the successful implementation of a third-party hosted solution combining off-the-shelf and customized platforms from multiple vendors to provide matter management, e-billing, document management, records management and IP management in a totally integrated solution across Colgate's global legal organization.
Mike Russell, Strategic Legal Technologist and Director of Business Systems Projects at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, pioneered the effort to drive financial savings and process efficiency by partnering enterprise legal services with corporate IT to design, develop and implement a technology solution for distributed paper-capture, document management workflow and VoIP communications. This enabled geographically aligned "hub" units of centralized paralegals and staff to support legal tasks for attorneys. During the first four months in operation, this project contributed to a $1.5 million expense run-rate reduction.
Litigation and Practice Support Award
Julie Brown, Litigation Technology Manager at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, championed litigation and practice support by re-engineering e-discovery workflows to streamline processes, reduce client costs and ensure that processes are repeatable and defensible. She implemented in-house analytics tools, a workflow-based project management system and creative methods for educating attorneys and paralegals in electronic discovery. Julie is also a public speaker and author on the topic of litigation and practice support, and an active participant in EDRM and ILTA.
Professional Services Award
Kim Craig, Director of Project Management Office at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, was responsible for developing and leading the transformation and innovative implementation of legal project management within her firm. Kim's team of certified project management professionals work on client-facing, revenue-generating matters with attorneys. She has led her team in the convergence of legal project management, process improvement and Lean Six Sigma, knowledge management and practice management with innovative and creative technologies.
Risk and Records Management Award
Gillian Glass, Practice Support and Records Manager at Farella Braun + Martel LLP, implemented a successful records destruction procedure that matches the firm’s retention schedule. The result of this project has saved the firm thousands of dollars in offsite storage costs. She also managed the conversion of the firm's records management system, implementing software that will enable parallel management of the firm’s electronic and paper records.
Server Operations and Security Award
Sean Power, Manager of Enterprise Infrastructure and Security at Lathrop & Gage LLP, achieved a significant upgrade and consolidation of the firm’s network and security infrastructure to develop a highly available computer and network environment with high visibility into performance and operations. This project was completed in an 18-month period.
User Support Services Award
Justin Hectus, Director of Information at Keesal, Young & Logan, is charged with delivering the right information to the right people at the right time to support good business decisions. Over the past year, Justin has led the development of a learning environment that measures end-user skill levels across all applications and job functions and provides personalized training opportunities and credit for participation via a custom-built Web-based system.
INDIVIDUAL AWARDS
Young Professional Award
Meredith Williams, Chief Knowledge Management Officer at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, is a 34-year-old who is passionate about KM. Meredith started the knowledge management department at her firm over 10 years ago and has grown it into a world-renowned program.
Leadership Award
Loretta Auer, Chief Information Officer at Fish & Richardson P.C., has championed initiatives to improve firmwide administrative systems and staff productivity through best practices. Loretta has mentored and developed an IT and information management staff that has accomplished projects using the best examples of emerging technologies and development platforms in the legal industry, including .Net-based reporting applications, SharePoint, Windows 7, Office 2010 and e-discovery.
VENDOR AWARDS
Consultant Award
Howard Russell, Co-Chief Executive Officer at RBRO Solutions Inc., founded the company to enable law firms to maximize organizational and employee efficiency by utilizing document management solutions. He is committed to providing his clients with the best technology solutions and the highest level of end-to-end services, integrated software products and customized software solutions.
Vendor Thought-Leader Award
Lance Waagner, President and Chief Executive Officer at Intelliteach, Inc., has spent the last 20+ years championing ILTA and providing exemplary user support services. Within the last 12 months, Lance developed the "Guru Guide to User Support" project, including a legal industry-exclusive helpdesk metrics report, a 30+ city ILTA roadshow, a dedicated Guru website with free resources and downloads, several articles for ILTA publications and a presentation (and follow-up webinar) as part of the 2010 ILTA conference.
Vendor Implementation Award
Founded in 1997, Hubbard One is part of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. Our innovative set of software and solutions include Web communications, contact and relationship management, experience and pitch management, competitive intelligence and intranets and extranets. Hubbard One’s team of experts also offers a wide range of creative, technology and consulting services.
Innovative Vendor Award
Handshake Software is the leader in providing products and services to enhance SharePoint for intranets, extranets, search, document and email management and mobile access. Some of the world's largest law firms use Handshake products for SharePoint page personalization; out-of-the box integration with applications like Elite/Aderant; to extend SharePoint document management functionality to provide a complete law firm system; to allow non-programmers to quickly create or modify SharePoint Web Parts; and deliver information to mobile devices.
REGIONAL AWARDS
City Rep Champion
Stacie Oste, Training Coordinator at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, is the Charlotte, North Carolina City Rep.
Region of the Year Award {TIE}
South Pacific: Exceeding Your Expectations. Inspired by ILTA members and driven by their commitment, the South Pacific Region sets the highest standard for knowledge-sharing, peer-networking and client service among legal technology professionals. Teamwork and team spirit, camaraderie, generosity, excellence, distinction, achievement, collaboration and creativity reign.
Middle Atlantic: Delivering a Large Daily Dose of ILTA. The Middle Atlantic Region’s strong commitment to ILTA’s core values, focus on quality programming and legion of volunteers are hallmarks of the region. They’re proud of their growth, expansion and collaboration with sister organizations, their innovative meeting formats and the large pool of volunteers who contribute their time and knowledge in many different ways, including service as a director or officer, speaking and authoring.
ORGANIZATIONAL AWARDS
Project of the Year Award
Littler Mendelson P.C. has developed Littler CaseSmart™, a case-management solution that combines a Littler-developed proprietary technology platform, rigorous quality assurance measures and an alternative attorney staffing model. This solution streamlines the way that cases are managed and is designed to increase efficiency, productivity and accountability, while providing clients greater confidence that work is being managed with the highest possible quality standards.
SharePoint Innovator of the Year Award
Bingham McCutchen LLP has designed internal dashboards to promote efficiency and improved communication across the firm. The dashboards' improved delivery of real-time intelligence about clients on a firmwide level; provided lawyers with instant access to their internal financial metrics; and gave both lawyers and staff a comprehensive view of their individual HR information.
Innovative Member of the Year Award
Bryan Cave LLP has taken a structural approach to innovation that mirrors the research and development functions found in the best global companies. As a result, it has been able to develop innovative solutions on a broad front and bring many more such innovations to market than is typical in large global law firms.
Is it too much to assume a base level of technological sophistication when attending a technology trade show or event (in our case, legal technology event)? Judging by what we have seen across various conferences over the years, the answer, sadly, seems to be yes. Accordingly, we have lowered our expectations when it comes to conference technology access and the use of technology to better the user experience and reluctantly fought with non-existent or unreliable onsite internet access, pitiful bandwidth, and spotty cell phone coverage in key conference areas… Although ILTA has always been on top of these items, the 2011 ILTA Conference provided the basic technology needed and raised the bar to show us just how technology can be used to greatly enhance the attendees’ experience.
It may sound ridiculous at this day and age to start with wireless internet access, but let's be honest. That is NOT always, or even usually, something that is available at legal technology shows. If you are even lucky enough to have access to wireless at a conference, it usually isn't free. If it is free, you have to join the underground network to get the code – even though you are using it to promote their show. Neither the availability nor the cost were an issue at ILTA this year. ILTA sent out an email with the internet access information and codes the Friday before the conference to avoid any confusion onsite. Not only were there networks available from anywhere on the property, they also had a separate network for attendees to connect to from their wireless devices.
With the basics solidly covered, ILTA also raised the stakes on their conference Mobile App which debuted last year. Last year, I had the iPhone app installed and it was helpful. It was one of the first apps for a legal technology show that we had seen that wasn't just a link to a mobile webpage. This year, however, the ILTA Mobile App reached a whole new level. The mobile App provided access to the conference agenda, speaker details, attendee list, exhibitor info, exhibit hall map, Gaylord Resort info, Twitter integration, personalized agenda setup, latest ILTA News and more. It was made available on Apple iPhone/iPad, Android and Blackberry smartphones and a mobile website was offered for anyone not covered under that list. We were curious to see how many people utilized this tool and so we reached out to Clay Gibney, ILTA's IT Director who spearheaded this program. Here are the installation numbers…
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