  The slope of the Isgur-Wise function at the normalization point,
$\xi^{(1)}(1)$,is one of the basic parameters for the extraction of the $CKM$
matrix element $V_{cb}$ from exclusive semileptonic decay data. A method for
measuring this parameter on the lattice is the effective theory for heavy
quarks at small velocity $v$. This theory is a variant of the heavy quark
effective theory in which the motion of the quark is treated as a perturbation.
In this work we study the lattice renormalization of the slow heavy quark
effective theory. We show that the renormalization of $\xi^{(1)}(1)$ is not
affected by ultraviolet power divergences, implying no need of difficult
non-perturbative subtractions. A lattice computation of $\xi^{(1)}(1)$ with
this method is therefore feasible in principle. The one-loop renormalization
constants of the effective theory for slow heavy quarks are computed to order
$v^2$ together with the lattice-continuum renormalization constant of
$\xi^{(1)}(1)$ . We demonstrate that the expansion in the heavy-quark velocity
reproduces correctly the infrared structure of the original (non-expanded)
theory to every order. We compute also the one-loop renormalization constants
of the slow heavy quark effective theory to higher orders in $v^2$ and the
lattice-continuum renormalization constants of the higher derivatives of the
$\xi$ function. Unfortunately, the renormalization constants of the higher
derivatives are affected by ultraviolet power divergences, implying the
necessity of numerical non-perturbative subtractions. The lattice computation
of higher derivatives of the Isgur-Wise function seems therefore problematic.
