AALL Draws CodeXistas to Philadelphia
The American Association of Law Libraries drew a huge crowd, including CodeX crew, to Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center and the adjacent Marriott Hotel Downtown for the 108th annual meeting and conference. The event also included a six-pack of “pre-conference” educational mini-conferences and an exhibit hall to explore and discuss new and improved technology and services.
Among the six early bird offerings were the “AALL Hackathon: Connecting Legal Information” (July 18) and the Private Law Librarians & Information Professionals Special Interest Section’s “Summit 2015: The Innovation Imperative” (July 17-19). AALL ran from the 19th to 21st.
The hackathon was held off-site at Peirce College, and brought together East Coast programmers and designers with law librarians, who were invited to “transform governmental and legal datasets into something useful, accessible and amazing,” said the organizers. The event was designed to not just “create innovative and accessible information sources for patrons and libraries using government or legal information,” but also to build relationships between law librarians and technologist that will carry forward after the event.
Private Law Librarians & Information Professionals
PLLIP comprises about a third of AALL’s membership of 4,500, said Scott Bailey, global director of research services at Squire Patton Boggs and the new chair of PLLIP. The conference also triggered the unveiling of the group’s new moniker, changing the name from Private Law Libraries. Bailey saluted the move from places to people. “We have moved from libraries to emphasizing and promoting our librarians and [other] professionals.”
The 2015 Summit kicked off with terrific networking at the opening reception, held at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Guests included David Perla, who ran the fascinating LexRedux West at Stanford Law School the day before the 2014 CodeX FutureLaw conference. (Perla is now president, legal, at Bloomberg BNA.)
On day 2, Aric Press, former editor-in-chief and senior vice president at ALM (and past editor-in-chief of “The American Lawyer”), presented the opening keynote, pronouncing that he is “very bullish about the future of Big Law—clients don’t have other options.” But Press, a lawyer and now a consultant at Bernero & Press, acknowledged that Big Law’s road may be bumpy, citing flat revenues and the trend of eliminating most equity partners. He praised librarians for embracing technology to serve firms’ needs while dealing with tight budgets and minimal staff. “Law librarians are a notable exception to the lack of disruption in the legal market. You are to be congratulated for navigating really difficult times in the industy,” he said. (See my Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business report here.)
Innovation Tournament
Next on the agenda was an “Innovation Tournament,” (which also happens to be the name of speaker Karl Ulrich’s 2009 book.) Ulrich is vice dean of innovation and the CIBC Professor of Enterpreneurship and e-Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. After his orientation presentation, attendees broke into small groups and came up with potential “apps” or processes that could be used to accelerate tasks and improve the delivery of library services to their constituents (e.g., lawyers and others). GMTA: Many of the participants focused on providing concierge-style services to speed research results and proactively assist their “consumers.”
The audience was definitely engaged. The tournament “was both an incubator for generating new ideas and a workshop on how to replicate the process for creating and refining new ideas, helping private law librarians become more forward-thinking and proactive in their approach to information and knowledge delivery than ever before. Exciting times!” said Denise Pagh, co-chair of the Summit and research and information operations manager at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
The ideas generated during the tournament “propelled us toward priorities that will bring visibility to our members and enhance their professional strategy. The value we bring will be more evident to our firms and clients as a result,” observed Bailey.
The afternoon wrapped up with an “Innovation Showcase” panel, featuring Steven Lastres, Christy MacKinnon, Mark Gediman, Shannon Wilson, Cynthia Brown, Mark Torchiana and Cameron Gowan.
Awards
The final PLLIP event on Sunday was a luncheon to honor the year’s award winners. Jean O’Grady, director of research services at DLA Piper, won the “Advocate of the Year.” The author of the popular “Dewey B Strategic” blog, in February she reported on CodeX’s partnership with ALM’s Legaltech, in “A Walk Down the CodeX Stanford Innovators Aisle at ALM Legal Tech.” She concluded that “If the ‘Innovation Aisle’ is any indication of the products which will be dominating Legal Tech in the future, many past attendees who had dismissed Legal Tech as a gigantic eDiscovery show will have add Legal Tech back into their calendars.”
Marcia Burris
Among the other award winners were Marcia Burris and Denise Pagh (Innovative Professional); Susan Catterall, (Best Blogger/Writer); and Ellen Callinan (Distinguished Librarian). I was humbled and honored to receive their first “Outside Champion Award,” which I immediately nicknamed the “Outside Agitator Award.”
Exhibit Hall
& Monica
The main AALL conference opened Saturday at 5 p.m., with the opening reception in Exhibit Hall. CodeX friends were highly visible: including the gangs from Lex Machina, Ravel Law and Casetext—along with Bloomberg BNA, Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer, Fastcase, ILTA, ALM, and CALI, among others.
I rarely have any interest in book signing unless the author is truly a friend of mine, but I was third in line to buy her book, “All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists.” (To my knowledge, she isn’t active in CodeX (yet)
But my favorite moment at AALL occurred when I noticed the badge I’d been wearing for a day—I guess the printer didn’t have “informatics” in its vocabulary and used artificial intelligence to complete my title.
Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a member of the California bar. Aric Press was her boss, twice, at ALM when she was editor-in-chief of Law Technology News. She now freelances for Bloomberg BNA’s Big Law Business. Email: mbay@stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay.