This year’s ILTA Conference was held in Disneyworld, the self-proclaimed “happiest place on earth.”
I just returned from this year’s Conference put on by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA). It’s a massive show held every year for ILTA members and guests. This year, the four-day Conference was held in DisneyWorld.
Conference organizers reported that this was the second most attended show in ILTA’s history with over 3400 registerants. There were over 150 sponsors and exhibitors in a hall that spent two wings of the convention center in one of the hosting hotels.
Obviously, this is a big show, perhaps one of the largest LegalTech shows. With a show this big, it’s impossible to see everything, meet with everyone who wants to meet, attend all the educational sessions, and go to all the parties. It’s exhausting.
But it’s always a good show. This Conference draws a lot of people in IT departments in large and mid-size firms that ILTA caters to. These folks tend to be technical, so the conversations are often full of tech speak and jargon. As I have discussed before, few lawyers attend. That’s a shame since the tech folks that attend often have to go back and convince lawyers that the tech they saw and discussed is valuable. The lawyers who aren’t technical then get the information secondhand from folks who are. And the lawyers often don’t communicate their needs and pain points to the IT people. All of this often leads to a reluctance of the decision-makers in law firms (lawyers) to understand and accept some of the recommendations.
This year, though, may be a little different. Several vendors reported that many law firms are under pressure to get with the generative AI program and fear being left behind. This fear and race