AALL Business Skills Clinic

AALL has put together a great professional development opportunity for law librarians with the 2015 Business Skills Clinic. Just for full disclosure’s sake—I serve on the taskforce to put the event together. The clinic is designed to give you an opportunity to “learn core business skills” . From my experience it seems law librarians are tasked with learning core business skills while on the job—i.e., learning-by-doing. There certainly are pros to this—the skills are engaged with and partially learned in a practical setting, but, in my opinion, immediate goal-oriented learning leaves blind spots, a lack of nuance, and definitely not expertise. The huge benefit of this clinic is the depth in which core business skills will be examined, and by a faculty of experts. Moreover, attendees will learn these skills outside of the work environment and in a context that isn’t focused on accomplishing a specific, immediate task, but rather on the tools to accomplish future, myriad tasks. Come and learn the skills the greatly affect your career.

Here are the business skills that will be covered:

• Managerial Finance
• Human Resources
• Marketing and Communications
• Performance Measures
• Negotiations
• Strategic Planning

The deadline for registration for the clinic is Tuesday, September 22nd. The cost is $795. And, as per the banner above, the dates for the institute are Friday, October 16th, and Saturday, October 17th. The location is the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile.

For more information, and detailed bios on the institute’s faculty, please check out this wonderfully put-together .pdf.