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And the Winners Are...
We are excited to present the winners of the 2011 Distinguished Peer Awards. Winners were announced at the awards dinner on Thursday, August 25 as part of ILTA’s 2011 annual educational conference: Rev-Elation. View the program guide for a list of nominees.

View a slide show of photos from the awards dinner.

Our 2011 Distinguished Peer Awards winners are:

Leadership Award
Winner Executive Summary
Loretta Auer
(see press release)
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.
 
Young Professional Award
Winner Executive Summary
Meredith Williams
(see press release)
Meredith Williams, Director of Knowledge Management 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.
 
Communications Technologies Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Joy Heath Rush 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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Kara Portwood
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
William Caraher
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Ben Weinberger 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 database and offering improved collaboration and workflow capabilities, the project achieved 100 percent ROI in less than two years.
 
Financial Management Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Tanielle Huff 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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Scott Rechtschaffen
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner (tie) Executive Summary
Lawrence Gianneschi 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 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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Julie Brown
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Kim Craig
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Gillian Glass
(see press release)
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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Sean Power Sean Power, Manager of Enterprise Infrastructure and Security at Lathrop & Gage LLP, achieved a significant upgrade and consolidation of the firms 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 Champion
Winner Executive Summary
Justin Hectus
(see press release)
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.
 
City Rep Award
Winner Executive Summary
Stacie Oste Stacie Oste, Training Coordinator at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, is the Charlotte, North Carolina City Rep.
 
Vendor Thought-Leader Award
Winner Executive Summary
Lance Waagner
(see press release)
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.
 
Consultant of the Year Award
Winner Executive Summary
Howard Russell 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 Implementation Award
Winner Executive Summary
Hubbard One
(see press release)
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
Winner Executive Summary
Handshake Software
(see press release)
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.
 
Region of the Year Award
Winner (tie) Executive Summary
South Pacific
(see press release)
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 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.
 
Project of the Year Award
Winner Executive Summary
Littler Mendelson P.C.
(see press release)
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.
 
Innovative Member of the Year Award
Winner Executive Summary
Bryan Cave LLP
(see press release)
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.
 
SharePoint Innovator of the Year Award
Winner Executive Summary
Bingham McCutchen LLP
(see press release)
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.
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