ILTA White Papers

The New Librarian

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law firm. After two years there, I decided to move back to Dallas to complete my last semester of graduate school while I worked as an electronic resources librarian for a private school. In this role, I was able to continue developing my technology skills as I assisted the catalogers and developed course wiki pages with research guides and multimedia content for student use in the library. I also worked part-time in a management consulting firm administering the sales team's CRM database, ensuring accurate company information, updating records and assigning sets of contacts for the targeting pipeline. This is how my career in business development began. it been so important to harness that information to drive accurate and effective strategic management. Haynes and Boone, LLP now has two dedicated CI researchers embedded within the business development department. We have deployed a number of technologies to assist in the collection and analysis of data, including a listening platform, a client analysis tool, various CRM add-ons, business intelligence products and numerous database and resource subscriptions. We coordinate all these tools and liaise with various firm departments, including accounting, the library, conflicts and IT. The firm needs CI more and more, and our CI team has never been busier. I predict that as firm leadership's needs become increasingly sophisticated, law firm CI will continue to evolve as a critical element of management support. to continue developing my technology skills as I assisted the catalogers. I was able INTELLIGENCE This introduction to business development, along with a series of research and reference positions, led me to my next career step — competitive intelligence (CI). I was hired at Haynes and Boone, LLP in the fall of 2008 as the firm's first CI professional with the intention that I would develop a CI function for the firm. The timing was perfect with the global financial crisis placing more pressure on law firms and their corporate clients than ever before. Today, firms face significant challenges in cost control, strategic client growth and attorney business development. The need for information has increased immensely in the past few years. Never before have firms had access to so much information about their clients, markets, competitors and industries, and never before has THE MOVE INTO COMPETITIVE A STRONG NETWORK FOR GROWTH Over the course of my career, I have developed a great network of librarians and vendors who are my friends, colleagues and mentors. We have encouraged professional development and helped each other along the way in our careers. I am grateful to have this network of peers and mentors because of their support and guidance. It continues to be among the most important elements in what I consider a successful career. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the field and to creating a dynamic community of CI practitioners in the legal profession. Emily Cunningham Rushing is the Competitive Intelligence Manager at Haynes and Boone, LLP. She can be contacted at emily.rushing@haynesboone. com. AALL/ILTA White Paper 53

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