Bennett Jones First Law Firm to Win Top Level Global Intranet Innovation Award

(Toronto, ON and Calgary, AB) – Bennett Jones LLP, a leading Canadian business law firm, has been named the recipient of the Platinum Award (first over-all) in the 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards. This is the first time a law firm has won this prestigious international award, which honours innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets.

"This is a remarkable honour and a testament to the firm's commitment to create and foster a highly efficient and collaborative work environment, ultimately resulting in providing the highest standard of service to our clients," says Hugh MacKinnon, Chairman and CEO, Bennett Jones.

The firm's intranet (BenNet) was created to provide a task-oriented, user-friendly platform that simplifies the process by which lawyers and employees alike can efficiently contribute to, share and reuse information within the firm.

BenNet incorporates many advanced features, including the ability to quickly assemble virtual books for everyone to use, the ability for firm members to self-declare information such as their language skills and capacity for additional work, the ability to add value by attaching comments to any resource in the system, and the ability to track new documents created using resources from BenNet, to name a few.

Alex Manchester, Senior Consultant from Step Two, provided some further insight from the panel of judges, "Of particular note is the faceted classification system that underpins the BenNet legal precedents database, in essence 'online shopping', which is incredibly powerful. We've seen law firms struggle with the underlying issue here and believe it is something many peer firms will want to implement to augment their own precedents databases."

"BenNet is more than just a portal. It is a mission-critical worktool that targets the most significant roles within the Firm—including the formulation and delivery of legal advice and legal documents to our clients", said Brian Bawden, Bennett Jones' National Director of Knowledge Management and leader of the firm's intranet project.

Bennett Jones also wishes to acknowledge the important roles of its outside developers, V51 Consulting Inc. (www.v51.com) for solution architecture and SharePoint development, Habañero Consulting Group (www.habaneros.com) for user experience and design, and RBRO Solutions Inc. (www.rbrosolutions.com) for DMS integration.

The Platinum Award will be presented to Bennett Jones at the KM World conference in Washington, DC on November 17, 2010.

About the Intranet Innovation Awards
Awarded by Step Two Designs (www.steptwo.com.au) a recognized thought-leader in intranet strategy and design, the Intranet Innovation Awards, now in their fourth year, are global awards celebrating new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets. This year 55 companies spanning various industries from around the world entered the competition, judged by an international panel of intranet experts. Countries represented by 2010 winners include Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and the Netherlands. More information about the 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards, and a detailed report, are available at www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2010.

About Bennett Jones
Bennett Jones LLP is a leading business law firm founded and focused on principles of professional excellence, integrity, respect and independent thought. Our firm's leadership position is reflected in the law we practise, the groundbreaking work we do, the client relationships we have, and the quality of our people.

For more information, please contact:

Brian Bawden
National Director, Knowledge Management
416.777.6076 bawdenb@bennettjones.com