Category Archives: Continuing Education

The Continuing Education Committee plans and presents educational programs each year. Members may work with other CALL committees on program planning.

CALL Continuing Education Event: Librarians as Strategic Partners to Lawyers

On October 20, 2015, Neal, Gerber and Eisenberg hosted a CALL Continuing Education Event, “Forecasting Opportunities for Rainmakers: Librarians as Strategic Partners to Lawyers.” Below is a description of the program followed by a recap by one of the law firm librarian panelists, Skadden’s Vanessa Meihaus.

Program Description: “Law librarians have the opportunity to innovate their roles from traditional legal researchers to strategic business development partners. Join three of your peers to hear how they have evolved their roles to help lawyers develop new business opportunities and identify new markets.”

Continue reading CALL Continuing Education Event: Librarians as Strategic Partners to Lawyers

Forecasting Opportunities for Rainmakers: Librarians as Strategic Partners to Lawyers

I was thrilled to share insights from the marketing and business development perspective at the October 20, 2015 CALL program “Forecasting Opportunities for Rainmakers.” Here are a few take-aways that emerged from our conversation:

Collaboration NOT Competition. Our professional lives are already hectic enough with responding to or preparing for the various requests we receive from our attorneys—the last thing we should devote our attention and energy to is competing with each other.

Let’s face it, we’re not mind readers (although our attorneys often think that we are!). Any time you have the opportunity to share information across administrative departments—do it. Open communication and sharing of information ultimately creates greater efficiency for all of us and reduces time spent tracking down information that only resides in certain departments. Continue reading Forecasting Opportunities for Rainmakers: Librarians as Strategic Partners to Lawyers

CALL Institute Day – May 21, 2015

The CALL Continuing Education Committee hosted a successful Institute Day program on May 21, 2015 and would like to thank Thomson Reuters for agreeing to act as a sponsor. The theme of this year’s program was “Charting a Path to Management: Skills to Take Your Career to the Next Level.” The purpose of Institute Day was twofold: to identify and learn about the skills needed to further one’s career.

CALL Institute Day 2015 with Steve Hughes

To accomplish this, the Continuing Education Committee brought in speaking and presenting expert, Steve Hughes, from Hit Your Stride, to discuss ways to become more effective communicators. Continue reading CALL Institute Day – May 21, 2015

Raise Your Profile and Communicate Your Value Through LinkedIn

Nathan Rosen
Nathan Rosen

January 29, 2015 marked a first for the CALL Continuing Education Committee. For the very first time, a CALL Continuing Education program was broadcast to attendees through a webinar.  Lawyer, librarian, and LinkedIn guru, Nathan Rosen presented  “Raise Your Profile and Communicate Value through LinkedIn: A CALL Personal Enrichment Webinar” from New York City to the CALL community.

The webinar was made possible through the generosity of the law firm of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, which agreed to tech host the program. For future educational programs, the use of webinars will allow the Continuing Education Committee to tap into a deeper pool of prospective speakers and reach a larger CALL membership audience.

For those who were unable to access or attend the webinar, the recording of Nathan Rosen’s program is available through the CALL website.

The presentation topic touched on a subject important to many CALL members: how to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile. The speaker, Nathan Rosen, began his presentation by discussing how to use LinkedIn as a professional marketing brochure.  His top 5 tips for developing powerful LinkedIn profiles were:

  1. create a compelling profile
  2. craft settings
  3. connect to people you know
  4. contribute
  5. congratulate others.

Nathan also discussed using LinkedIn as a search tool to research possible new connections and companies. Once possible new connections were identified, he described best practices for reaching out to them.  I especially found his advice for obtaining recommendations and endorsements to be invaluable.

The impression I came away with at the end of Nathan’s presentation was that powerful, successful LinkedIn profiles are not built in a day. Slow and steady progress through connecting with others, sharing content, and careful editing of one’s profile will lead to LinkedIn success. I felt motivated and excited after hearing Nathan’s presentation to get working on my Linked-In profile, as I’m sure other CALL members did too!

The Frightening Power of Social Media Investigations – a Special Halloween CALL Workshop

On Wednesday, October 29, CALL hosted a special Halloween workshop. Diana Koppang of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP lectured on the “Frightening Power of Social Media Investigations.” CALL members learned how to use social media websites to hunt down hard-to-find people. Continue reading The Frightening Power of Social Media Investigations – a Special Halloween CALL Workshop

MAALL Annual Meeting October 5-7 2014

Rapid change is a standard part of the law librarian’s professional life.

 

MAALL logoThe Annual Meeting of the Mid-American Association of Law Libraries will offer programming and networking opportunities to help you thrive amid an evolving legal and technological landscape.

We invite you to join us for an informative and interactive conference at the MAALL member rate.

Stay in touch!

Conference site:
http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/maall/newsite/annualmtg/

MAALL on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MAALLibraries

Conference hashtag: #MAALL14

 

Do.ne, or what to do when your favorite service disappears

This article was previously published in the Law School Ed Tech blog. It is adapted from an Ignite talk given at a Continuing Education session on November 5, 2013 for CALL.

The Chicago-Kent Library Technology Group runs many kinds of projects.  Keeping track of what’s going on in individual projects can be challenging.  We needed a cloud-based service for project management, something that could:

  • Track projects and tasks
  • Let us assign tasks to individual workers
  • Comment on tasks when we had questions or more information.

Continue reading Do.ne, or what to do when your favorite service disappears

Legal Citation Workshop Review

On Wednesday, February 5th, a sizeable group of law librarians, paralegals, and other CALL members joined the CALL Continuing Education Committee for a “Legal Citation Workshop.”

Clare Willis, Research Librarian and resident Bluebook expert at the Chicago-Kent Law Library, offered useful tips on navigating the Bluebook and locating the most helpful rules on common US citations. She also addressed the Internet citation rules, the white pages, the blue pages, and the index while giving helpful examples.

Be sure to consult her helpful guide to Bluebook citation, which was used as a resource in the citation workshop, at: http://uiuc.libguides.com/law-bluebook

Next, Heidi Kuehl, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian and Coordinator of Educational Programming at Northwestern’s Pritzker Legal Research Center, gave an overview of the Bluebook rules for treaties, UN documents, international case law, and foreign documents.

Heidi pointed toward free websites for research from the United Nations (http://www.un.org/en/documents/) and EISIL (from the American Society of International Law – http://www.eisil.org/), which guide researchers toward essential elements of Bluebook citation.

Finally, Philip Johnson, Instructional and Student Services Librarian at John Marshall Law School’s Louis L. Biro Law Library, gave a summary of the new Illinois neutral case citation rules (Rules 6 and 23), and fielded questions about formatting from the audience. John Marshall provides a comprehensive tutorial on the new citation rules at
http://library.jmls.edu/reference-tutorials.php.

After the presentations, the attendees discussed nuances of the Bluebook, ALWD, and neutral citation rules, and had an open question and answer period that was enjoyed by all. Keep an eye out for other CALL Continuing Education events!

AALL2 go Pick of the Month

AALL’s Continuing Professional Education Committee presents the AALL2go pick of the month: So You Think You Can Teach:Keeping the Audience Awake and Learning Alive.

 

Legal research instruction can be interesting, engaging and fun! Five experienced and dynamic academic librarians present 10-minute mini-lessons, highlighting five different teaching tools to capture the audience’s attention.

The mini-lessons cover such topics as secondary materials, cost-effective case law research, locating federal statutes using popular name, federal administrative materials, and D.C. materials.

The teaching tools that are demonstrated include:

  • showing movie clips that connect a legal research concept with an example from pop culture
  • using imagery to create a personal legal research scenario
  • creating a screencast lesson (with Camtasia and PowerPoint)
  • presenting an interesting or funny example or anecdote to engage the audience
  • utilizing props and games to capture the audience’s attention and to encourage participation.

The five different learning styles and the importance of teaching to those learning styles are also discussed. The mini-lessons are followed by a Q&A session where the panelists discuss in-class assignments, research logs, textbooks, CALI lessons, and the importance of creating relatable research examples.

Everyone from the beginner to the experienced legal research instructor is sure to discover innovative techniques that they can use to engage their audiences.

Find this and more free continuing education programs and webinars for AALL members on AALL2go!