Are you a Wisconsin Legal Innovator? Know one? Last year’s Wisconsin Legal Innovators, from left, William Caraher, Rebecca Scheller, Sam Owens, Mary Turke, and Colleen Ball, put new ideas to work to solve problems facing their clients and communities.
May 17, 2017 – Last year’s Lifetime Legal Innovator, Colleen Ball, is described as always in motion, looking for the next good idea. She thinks like a startup. She has energy, vision, and the wisdom to recognize someone else’s great idea.
Ball, a state Public Defender appellate attorney, channels her passion for access to justice into helping pro se parties navigate the appeals process and finding ways to make appellate practice more efficient for lawyers.
She encourages lawyers to “pause from time to time and think about how we work, how we deliver legal services.”
“No matter our area of practice, there are ways to deliver better services more efficiently,” says Ball. “We can discover those ways by spending time outside of our own work environments, observing how others (not just lawyers) deliver services, and thinking about how to adapt those strategies to our own practices.”
Know a Legal Innovator? Nominate by June 30
Through the “That’s a Fine Idea: Legal Innovation Wisconsin” initiative, the State Bar of Wisconsin is asking the legal community to help it tell the story of legal innovation.
Tell us about the people and ideas that are changing Wisconsin’s legal landscape. Nominate a Wisconsin Legal Innovator who breaks with tradition to do it better. The Wisconsin Lawyer will feature the people behind the best examples of legal innovation in November.
Innovation can come in many forms. It could mean:
- New ways to use technology to improve client service or serve a new market
- Best practices for promoting workplace diversity
- New marketing/business development strategies
- New ways of providing pro bono or reduced-cost services
- Changes in internal operations that result in greater efficiency
Learn more or find the nomination form at ThatsaFineIdea.com. The deadline for nominations is June 30, 2017.