ILTACON 2023 through the eyes of a 'first timer'

 

 

 

ILTACON - a short overview 

Disneyworld Orlando hosted this year's 43rd edition of ILTACON, the world's largest legaltech conference, organised by ILTA, the International Legal Tech Association, from 20 - 24 August. With just over 3,400 attendees (about half of whom were members of ILTA), parallel sessions spread over several hotels for different audiences and two huge halls with booths of vendors for software solutions for the legal market (> 400,000 square feet), the first thing you can say about ILTACON is: big! So this is where everyone was all along.

ILTACON in the united states is the 'mother convention' of local initiatives like ILTACON London next November, so the audience is also largely from the united states. But people from outside America do come. Because they can attach a label to their badge indicating that - and because there are special sessions where the 'Internationals' can get together - you've quickly found the remaining acquaintances from Europe anyway. Those labels are a really clever gimmick by the way: there were several labels freely available that you could stick under your badge according to your preference. As a result, first timers (like Eva) were instantly recognisable to others, as were Internationals, speakers, trainers, etc. This offered a good "conversation starter". Besides the labels, each badge had an electronic transmitter that you could activate if you wanted to link with another participant. Once both 'clicks' turned green, the other person appeared as a contact in your ILTACON app, which also contained the programme etc. All to encourage networking.

What does a week at ILTACON look like?

ILTACON offers a programme from Sunday afternoon until Thursday evening. So plenty to do. Sunday evening was officially kicked off with the opening reception and Thursday evening was closed collectively with a closing party. On Monday morning, the substantive sessions began, preceded each day by a Key Note session at the Yacht and Beachclub. Because of these content-strong sessions (and maybe also a bit because it was the only place where you could get breakfast 😉 ), basically everyone was always ready to go right away. During the day, you could move between venues by means of golf carts that went back and forth like a shuttle taxi. Well organised, because although the distance was perfectly manageable on foot, we often preferred the golf cart due to the temperature combined with the high humidity. Anything better than having to enter somewhere with sweat patches after all. The sessions during the week could be divided into more technical sessions, sessions focused on trends and developments in the market and sessions around (change) management of law firms. So there was something for everyone. One criticism we heard from visitors was that the programme - available via an app - did not immediately make clear which session was intended for which audience, which sometimes led to disappointment (too much on the main lines or just far too technical).

On Monday, the Exhibition hall was officially opened at 7pm, during which all suppliers could show their most creative side. This opening always has a theme and there is a real competition between the suppliers to get as creative as possible with that theme that evening. This time, the theme was Tailgate party, a typical American phenomenon of parties in car parks at sporting events prior to a game. BBQ and drinks emerge from the boot after which the pre-match fun can begin. Many people seem to end up not even attending the match itself. So the entire exhibition floor was sports-themed this year, which led to good outfits and a clear trend in gadgets (read: American football balls). The show floor was spread over two large halls that were connected by a middle section. If you want to have good conversations with suppliers, you do need several days. A number of suppliers also had a meeting room elsewhere in the hotel where they could give private demos, for example. Or could hold separate knowledge sessions for users.

The exhibition floor also had a stage where the startups were allowed to pitch. In a tight schedule, all startups that had been screened by an ILTA committee were featured. These startups also all had their own stands in that part of the hall. Our southern neighbours at Henchmann were also there and had good run-ups. So we expect a rapid expansion of that software to 'oversees'. A musical humour programme was still on offer every afternoon on the in-between section between the two halls, which meant that the exhibition floors were still well filled even at the end of the afternoon. The suppliers we spoke to were therefore all very satisfied with the turnout and the target group of visitors. Serious visitors who not infrequently led to serious leads. The programme included three evenings filled by ILTACON. On Tuesday and Wednesday, suppliers had the opportunity to invite their partners, customers and prospects to small or large meetings. The iManage party seems to have become a household word in this respect.

What sessions did we attend?

Monday started the day with a key note by Sara Ross, preceded by a musical introduction by Legal bytes, the occasional band that has been at ILTACON for 15 years and has songs about quiet loves on the helpdesk and the challenges of updating, etc.
Sara Ross' very lively session was about 'activating your aliveness factor'. What you can do to arrange your life so that you feel not so much 'less tired' but 'more alive'. A very inspiring story.
Then the more legal tech sessions began. We attended sessions on 'tools for successful project management' and the use of Teams. The conclusion of that session was: the advance of Teams is unstoppable (Zoom is still very popular in the US but Teams will win that battle) but let's start using it across the board, something that is clearly not happening yet. Relevant here is what governance policies you set up in the process (who is allowed to start a channel, how long do we keep the data and where is it located in the first place). A tip we took home was that if you create a Teams meeting in the calendar of Teams itself, you have much more functionality than if you do it from Outlook. We ended the day on the show floor with a scouting tour of vendors during the tailgate party.

Tuesday's key note had a very different character from the day before: a very entertaining show by "mentalist" Ken Salaz. We then attended the presentation of the ILTACON tech survey 2023. The executive summary of this will be presented shortly. The full report will be available to all members/participants of the survey from September. Taking photos was not allowed as the information was provided under embargo. More than 500 offices completed the survey in which they were divided into 5 silos in terms of size: > 50, 50 - 149, 150 - 349, 350 - 699 and > 700. Themes covered were emerging technologies, AI (obviously) and cloud adoption including hosted voip (cloud calling, with Microsoft Teams once again seeming to walk away with the win). The move to fully cloud-based working is also in full swing in America: 67% of respondents now had a DMS in the cloud and 27 were in the process of making that move. And the developments around Generative AI are also leading to discussions in America about how to embrace the trend, while maintaining good governance rules. Remarkably, this included frequent references to Europe. That's where regulation will have to come from. Whereas in the previous survey Metaverse was still a theme, this time it did not come up at all, which just goes to show that surveys are also very trend-sensitive.

In the afternoon, we attended a number of start-up presentations, including those by Briefcatch, Capacity and Dashboard legal. Clearly, Legal project management is still a growing field. We concluded the day with a session on the deployment of - and the importance of experimenting with - Large language models and AI. Training the software properly and training lawyers on how to set good prompts can minimise hallucination. And as one of the partners from a larger firm rightly noted: junior lawyers hallucinate too; it is up to us to guide and correct that. People recognised the discussions of a few years back about working in the cloud and everything around security. Often driven by fear, the extremes are used to say 'no', but you can't stop this trend. Of course, it is now at the top of Gardner's hype cycle, but it is only a matter of time until Generative AI can be deployed responsibly.

With nothing on the programme for the evening, these reporters then quickly dove into the pool.

Wednesday started with a key note by Dr Rob Archer on, among other things, the difference between 'good stress' and 'bad stress'. Of the many sessions that day, we picked out the session on 'overcoming the road blocks for document automation', a session on applications of ESG, on Case management in litigation (using e-discovery tools), on "the fundamentals of AI" and an interesting session by Intapp on change management at law firms. Meanwhile, on the exhibition floor, a long queue formed at the iManage stand to collect admission tickets for that evening's party.

Thursday was closing day. Visitors to the various parties had a tough time but the key note session for that morning was an important one, especially for those who want to know what the world's big firms are doing. Throughout the week, sessions had taken place where G100 and G200 offices interacted on various topics and the outcomes from those sessions were shared with the rest of the visitors in this wrap up session.

• Topics covered that week were:
  State of the market for legal. Need for surveys as CIOs often lack information on the rest of the market.
• Generative AI. Thomson Reuters is currently investing 100 mln a year in AI.
• Change management with lawyers ("rain makers are your secret weapon").
• Information governance (without an IG team)
• Security
• Cloud adoption
• Virtual meeting platforms 

 

Wrap up

Are very different things happening in the rest of the world than in ours? No.

Is it nevertheless worth visiting ILTACON? Definitely!

Especially for the larger firms in the Netherlands, it is good to see what happens here. We also spoke to Dutch offices who were here and who themselves indicated that the European ILTACON really lags behind this event as far as they are concerned.

For us, of course, it is also about the relationships, to see where the Netherlands and the rest of the world might differ, but above all to see which startups are knocking on ILTA's door. Because some of those startups of today, will be the big players of the future. Just look at the acquisition of Casetext by Thomson Reuters.

We will continue to follow it and hopefully be at it again in August 2024. Then in Nashville, Tennessee.