FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cara Schillinger Director of Membership, Marketing, and Communications 312.205.8020 [email protected]
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES ELECTS NEW EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER
Washington, DC-Based Board Member’s Term Will Begin in July 2017
CHICAGO, November 11, 2016—The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) membership has elected
Jean P. O'Grady, senior director of information, research, and knowledge services at DLA Piper in Washington, DC, to
serve as a member of its Executive Board from July 2017 to July 2020.
O'Grady is currently vice chair of AALL’s Economic Status of Law Librarians Committee and a member of the AALL
Spectrum Editorial Board. She also served as an editor on the Defining ROI: Law Library Best Practices digital white
paper that was published earlier this month. She has previously served as Private Law Librarians & Information
Professionals Special Interest Section (PLLIP-SIS) chair and vice chair, Council of Chapter Presidents chair, Private
Law Librarians Summit co-chair, and Annual Meeting Program Committee team leader.
“I’m pleased to have been chosen as a member of AALL’s Executive Board,” O'Grady said. “With the continued
pressure to demonstrate the value legal information professionals provide to the law firms, educational institutions,
and other organizations they support, I feel contributing to AALL’s efforts to demonstrate the strategic value of
information professionals to the legal community is more important than ever.”
O'Grady received her master of library science from St. John’s University, where she was a member of the Beta Phi
Mu honor society; a juris doctor from the Fordham University School of Law in New York City, where she received an
American Jurisprudence Award; and a bachelor of arts from Fordham University, also in New York.
Before working at DLA Piper, O'Grady was senior director of research service and libraries at the Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr law firm; associate director and research librarian at the Pace University School of Law
Library in White Plains, New York; legal information consultant at Jean P. O’Grady and Associates; director of legal
information services at the New York-based Shea & Gould law firm; and assistant director at the Proskauer Rose
Goetz and Mendelsohn law firm. She also was an adjunct professor at both the Palmer School of Library and
Information Science in Greenvale, New York, and St. John’s University’s Graduate Division of Library and
Information Science.
O’Grady is a member of the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, DC, a College of Law Practice Management fellow,
and a member of the New York Law Institute’s board of directors. She is a prior board member and president of the
Law Library Association of Greater New York and American Bar Association Law Practice Management Committee
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Knowledge Strategy Subgroup assistant chair. She also serves on the Editorial Board of Practice
Innovations, published by Thomson Reuters.
Over the years, O’Grady has a received significant recognition for her work, including AALL’s Presidential Certificate
of Appreciation in 2016, the PLLIP-SIS Advocate of the Year Award in 2015, Fastcase’s Fast 50 Award for Innovation
in 2011, and AALL’s Excellence in Marketing Award in 1999. Her popular Dewey B Strategic blog was named to the
ABA Blawg 100 list in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, and the ABA named it the best legal research and writing blog in
2013.
In addition to selecting O’Grady as a new board member, AALL’s membership elected a new vice president/president-
elect—Femi Cadmus, Edward Cornell law librarian, associate dean for library services, and professor of practice at
Cornell University Law Library in Ithaca, New York. Her term will last from July 2017 to July 2018.
Luis Acosta, chief, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Division II, Global Legal Research Center, Law
Library of Congress in Washington, DC, was elected secretary, and Beth Adelman, director, Charles B. Sears Law
Library, vice dean for legal information services, University at Buffalo School of Law, and associate university
librarian for legal information services, University at Buffalo Libraries, in Buffalo, New York, was also chosen as an
Executive Board member. Acosta and Adelman will serve terms from July 2017 to July 2020.
For more information on AALL leadership, please visit bit.ly/AALLExecutiveBoard.
About AALL
The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is the only national association dedicated to the legal information profession and
its professionals. Founded in 1906 on the belief that people—lawyers, judges, students, and the public—need timely access to
relevant legal information to make sound legal arguments and wise legal decisions, its nearly 4,500 members are problem solvers of
the highest order. AALL fosters the profession by offering its members knowledge, leadership, and community that make the whole
legal system stronger. For more information, visit www.aallnet.org.
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