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20 PLL Persp. 1 (2008-2009)

handle is hein.lbr/aaplper0020 and id is 1 raw text is: THE QUARTERLY OF THE PRIVATE LAW LIBRARIES SIS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES P EL. E VO ELE by Rachael Loper, Nixon Peabody LLP, Washington, DC Energize, Explore, Evolve, was the theme of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) 2008 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. I was privileged to attend as a guest of AALL because of my role as the chair of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA)'s strategic alliance committee. It was an honor to be invited to represent LMA and I hope to repay some of my debt of gratitude to AALL by putting a few of the things I learned at the conference down on paper for examination and debate. Aside from doing some informal networking in the exhibit hall (and with far-flung librarians from my own firm!) and looking for librarian/marketer panel ideas for LMA, I mostly spent my time on the competitive intelligence (CI) track, where marketers and librarians are most likely to cross paths. A recent Law Firm Inc. poll found that librarians say they spend 17 percent of their time working with marketing. In the same poll, 63 percent of librarians said that they are their firm's main source for marketing research and 55 percent are the firm's main source of Cl. Based on the remarks from the podium and in the audience, there are still gaps to be bridged between the two disciplines. I hope this article is a step in that direction. Give the librarians credit. During one panel there was some discussion around marketing's tendency to take full credit for ideas and projects in which the library staff has had more than a hand. I'm sure this has happened at most firms and I can say with a dollop of guilt that I have thoughtlessly done this myself. But part of the solution is easy you don't get what you don't ask for. At my first firm, the two head librarians took me aside and expressed in friendly but not uncertain terms that I would give them credit and cc them when I delivered the results of a project on which we had teamed. Prior to their direct and reasonable suggestion, it did not occur to me that they needed to be marketed to their internal audiences. It's the right thing to do; sometimes everyone needs a gentle reminder. Form v. Function? Form and Function! Another statement from the podium that struck me was from Kitty Schweyer, manager of CI at White & Case in New York. At the outset of her interesting talk on the forms and uses of CI, she remarked somewhat mockingly that, marketing likes pretty color charts and graphs. But in her comments Kitty didn't mention any of the research showing that graphic display of information enhances the swift apprehension of data. I would argue that a large part of what CI involves is sifting through data and bringing the useful nuggets to the surface in a way that is quick and easy for the user to understand. Yes, marketing likes charts and graphs... because they convey information efficiently. In law firms, librarians are usually told that they are not permitted to do analysis, with a few exceptions. What is different for many legal (as opposed to business) librarians is that now they are being asked to draw some conclusions that reduce risk in decision making. CI practitioners think in terms of value-added results and are focused on delivering analysis and not just information. What are the implications for your firm, and what is likely to happen next? What are the non-obvious trends in recent events? No one-no lawyer, no marketer, and no business person-wants to receive a dossier in the form of a 400- page tabbed and bound doorstop that includes the complete 10K and the last three years' annual reports but lacks an executive summary. What the receiver essentially hears when this lands in his or her inbox is, I don't know what all this means, you figure it out. A customer service focus demands more. Are Librarians Currently Doing CI? One fascinating story came from Paul Morton, a librarian in the market research function at Southern California Edison (SCE). The utility knew that the grocery chain Tesco was planning a raft of new stores in southern California, and they wanted to know exactly where in order to prepare for the expected spike in power usage in those locations. Tesco was not forthcoming about its Continued on page 4 P ECI Volume 20 Issue 1

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