This Week In Legal Tech: The Best Legal Tech Conferences For Small-Firm Lawyers
If you want to up your game in legal technology, which conferences are worth your time and money?
I am coming to you today from ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. Taking place this year in National Harbor, Md., on the outskirts of the nation’s capital, it is four full days of keynotes, educational programs, exhibitors and, yes, parties, all devoted to the theme of legal technology.
Do you wish you were here? Well, if you are a solo or small-firm lawyer, don’t. ILTACON is not the conference for you. It is primarily focused on large law firms and, within those firms, on information technology, knowledge management, and operations professionals.
So which legal tech conferences are best for solo and small-firm lawyers? If you want to up your game in legal technology, which ones are worth your time and money?
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ILTACON is one of a triumvirate of national legal tech conferences that draw the most attention and biggest headcounts every year. The other two are Legaltech New York, which this year is Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, and ABA Techshow, which will be in Chicago from March 15-18. For anyone who works in legal technology or for a legal-tech company that sells to lawyers, it is a safe bet they will attend at least one or two of these, if not all three.
But for small-firm lawyers, the only one of these three worth attending is ABA Techshow. Legaltech, like ILTACON, caters more to larger law firms and is heavily focused on a single topic – e-discovery. If you happen to be a small-firm lawyer who does a lot of e-discovery, then Legaltech may be for you. The vast majority of small-firm lawyers, however, will find little here of relevance to their practices.
By contrast, ABA Techshow is the small-firm lawyer’s legal tech conference. The programs focus on practical topics relating to the use of technology in small firms. The vendors who exhibit there are largely ones whose products cater to smaller firms. The attendees overwhelmingly come from solo and small firms. It is, in short, where you will feel right at home.
Outside the triumvirate, there are few legal tech conferences that are national in scope. One that launched in 2013 and has proven itself a stellar event for small-firm lawyers is the Clio Cloud Conference. After the 2014 conference, I wrote that it was one of the best legal technology conferences I had ever attended. After last year’s, I declared it déjà vu all over again. The next one is just a few weeks away – Sept. 19 and 20 in Chicago. (Tip: use this link to get a $150 discount on registration.)
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Although the conference is produced by the company that sells the Clio practice management platform and many of the attendees are Clio customers, the conference is not just for Clio users. To the contrary, the bulk of the conference is devoted to programs on legal technology and the business of law that are vendor neutral, practical, and presented by top speakers.
Another national conference targeted at smaller firms is Avvo’s Lawyernomics. The focus here is marketing, business development, and social media for lawyers, with a strong technology bent. Attend Lawyernomics to learn about mobile search marketing, content marketing, search-engine optimization, lead conversion, video marketing, and the like. One of its distinguishing hallmarks is the speakers it attracts – leading experts from within and without the legal field.
On this column’s home front, Above the Law is about to host its second annual Academy for Private Practice, which is Oct. 27 and 28 in Philadelphia. Although not exclusively about legal technology, tech is certainly on the agenda for this event, which addresses the challenges of starting and optimizing a small firm practice. I did not attend the first APP, but I am on the advisory board for this one and will be speaking there as well.
The conferences I have discussed so far are national in scope. But many of the best technology-education events for solo and small-firm lawyers are produced by state bar associations and CLE providers. Some of these are specifically focused on legal technology, while others more broadly cover solo and small-firm practice, including technology.
For example, the Connecticut Bar Association is holding a legal technology and practice management conference on Sept. 29 that is designed expressly for solo and small-firm lawyers. (Yes, I am speaking there also.) It will have programs on practical topics such as encrypting and protecting client data, best practices for fees and billing, and using collaboration tools for document review and file sharing, among others.
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Many if not most states now also have annual solo and small-firm conferences that include a good mix of legal tech programming. Space does not allow a state-by-state run down of these. And I certainly can’t claim to have attended them all. But some examples that stand out from my own experience are Minnesota Continuing Legal Education’s Strategic Solutions for Solo & Small Firms conference and the Indiana State Bar Association’s Solo & Small Firm Conference.
Unfortunately, both are done for this year, but you should investigate what your state offers and get it on your calendar.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have keynotes, seminars and, yes, parties to attend.
Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at [email protected], and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).
