Conferences / Symposia, Technology

Today's Tech: #ABATECHSHOW -- Announcements, Experiments, And Interviews With Experts

What did you miss at ABA TECHSHOW this year? Find out the latest and greatest news about legal technology here.

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Digital TechnologyOnce again, ABA TECHSHOW has come and gone. It’s always my favorite conference to attend, and this year was no exception. For solo and small-firm lawyers with an interest in keeping up with technology and learning how to use it effectively in their practices, ABA TECHSHOW can’t be beat.

This year, as always, there were a flurry of announcements from a wide range of legal technology companies. Of particular interest to me were those coming out of the law practice management space. For starters, Rocket Matter announced that it had fully revamped its user interface for the first time since its launch in 2008. Another contender in the space, Clio, announced partnerships with Vontage and Ruby Receptionists. Finally, MyCase (my employer), announced that it would be expanding MyCase Payments, its payment processing system, to include a built-in credit card option in addition to the free eCheck/ACH service currently available.

Two other companies that I’ve had my eye on also shared news worth noting. First, Casetext, a free legal research platform supplemented by annotated insights from other lawyers, announced it would be rolling out premium subscriptions later this year. This new subscription level will include advanced features such as one that was just released — the ability to identify the sentence in the case that is of the most import given how many other lawyers have written about it.

Another company that I’ve been following with interest, Factbox, which provides cloud-based software that makes it easy for busy litigators to organize all the facts, notes, and ideas in their cases, shared that it would be revising its payment plans for new customers to a more simple a flat rate of $45/month for every new contributor (or $38/month with an annual prepayment discount).

Of course, there was more to the conference than just the vendor announcements. There was an EXPO Hall to be explored — and experimented upon. If you’re a regular reader of my column, you may recall that I often tour exhibit halls to test whether vendors are responsive to potential customers. My past “experiments” have been justly criticized for my failure to include controls, so every time I recreate this experiment, I try to add a control to see how it will affect the outcome.

This year at ABA TECHSHOW, I controlled for the formality of clothing, whereas at Legaltech in January, I did my best to control for gender. At ABA TECHSHOW, I was only able to tour the exhibit hall once due to time limitations (as opposed to two or three times as I have done in the past). For the first section of the EXPO Hall, I toured the hall with a colleague of mine, Stephanie Phelan, in tow. I was wearing a more formal wrap dress (seen below in the video) while she wore a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Neither of us wore our “Exhibitor” badges.” She was unable to tour the second half of the exhibit hall due to time constraints and thus was only able to act as a control for the first section.

The rules were simple: I (and Stephanie for the first section — she walked about 20 yards behind me) would slowly walk through all sections of the exhibit hall and try to make eye contact with and smile at those manning the booths. Anyone who provided a verbal response to me or Stephanie, even one as simple as “hi,” made the cut.

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The results were quite interesting. Over 120 companies exhibited, and of those, only 6 passed the test.* Again, this is not exactly scientific, but each time I conduct this experiment, I learn something new.

Here are the vendors that made the cut for the first section of the EXPO Hall:

Clearly, Stephanie was more approachable than I was. It’s unclear whether it was due to her more casual clothing, her overall appearance, or her demeanor.

Here are the vendors that made the cut for the second half of the EXPO Hall, which only I walked through:

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To the companies that acknowledged us, congratulations. To the rest, we’ll see you next time.

Finally, while at the conference, I took the opportunity to interview a number of speakers and other legal technology and practice management experts. Here’s a sampling of the interviews. Tune in next week to watch each individual interview.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc6KvNXOVFg]

*The following companies were exempt from the experiment, since either Stephanie or I knew someone from the booth when we walked by it: Fastcase, Casetext, Clio, Ruby Receptionists, and LawToolBox.

Niki BlackNicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at@nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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