Legal Conferences Struggle For Survival -- Are Conference Apps The Cure?

Developing conference apps that actually add to the attendees' experience is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

I’ve attended a lot of legal conferences over the years — as a speaker, as a member of the media, and sometimes as an attendee. Not surprisingly, technology and changing expectations have left their mark on legal conferences, just as they have on many other facets of the practice of law and our society in general.

The traditional legal conference format has lost its appeal to many attendees, in part because lawyers can now obtain CLE credits in the comfort of their own home, on their own schedule. As a result, legal conferences have struggled in recent years to maintain attendee numbers — and relevance.

One way that conference planners have tried to adapt to the changing times is by rolling out conference apps. The organizers often laud the apps as evidence that they are tech-savvy and are meeting the expectations of 21st century lawyers.

Unfortunately, in my experience, many of these apps fall flat. Instead of providing an innovative, new way to experience a conference, they instead simply offer clunky, unintuitive access to the conference agenda. In other words, the apps are often a failure.

The latest ABA TECHSHOW app is an exception to this trend. I’m currently in Chicago for this conference and downloaded the app earlier this week. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the app is easy to navigate and provides not only access to hoards of useful and relevant information, it also provides opportunities to interact and share information with other attendees.

As you might expect, you’ll find the conference agenda on the app, along with links to information about the speakers. You can add sessions that interest you to your personal agenda with the click of a button. Additionally, you can bookmark speakers’ bios or exhibitors.

The “conference details” section provides useful information of the type that I often find myself searching for during a conference, including the wifi connection instructions.

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The app also allows you to send and receive private messages from other attendees. This is a great way to connect with colleagues prior to the conference, as I quickly learned when I discovered three messages waiting for me after uploading the app.

You’re also able to view a list of attendees, and can choose to connect with other attendees. That ensures that you’ll receive a notification whenever one of your connections posts to the app.

Those posts are part of the social experience of the app. There is an activity feed that constantly updates that includes photos and informational posts from attendees and vendors. In the case of the TECHSHOW app, it’s interesting to watch the vendors navigate the fine line of blatant promotion, as opposed to contributing valuable and interesting information to conference attendees. But that’s a different topic for another post.

The app offers a variety of different push notifications, which you can control in the app’s settings. You can receive notifications: 1) when people follow you, 2) when people you follow post to the app, and 3) of upcoming sessions.

The interactive elements of the app are what make it so valuable to attendees. The social activity feed kicked off in the days before the conference, with people posting photos taken while en route to the conference. Others posted photos of their time spent in Chicago the day before the conference began. Still others posted tips about finding parking deals or locating the nearest Starbucks. In essence, these posts created opportunities for conference attendees to interact and engage before the conference even began.

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Of course, the app isn’t perfect. There were issues with connecting social media profiles to attendees’ app listings. Some had issues with their password and couldn’t log in to the app. And on occasion, the app became non-responsive and I had to close it out and re-start it. But overall, I found that the app added a new dimension to the experience of attendees.

I asked one of the members of the ABA TECHSHOW Planning Board, John Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, what the Board hoped to accomplish with the 2018 app and what their vision was for iterations of the app in the years to come. He explained, “Our goal has been to provide an interactive forum for conference attendees that adds to — and simplifies — their experience. We’re hoping that the app will not only offer opportunities for engagement, but will also encourage increased participation, for example by making it easy for attendees to submit evaluations of sessions using the app, if that’s their preferred interface. We’d like to continue to build similar features into the app in the future.”

All in all, I’d say they’ve succeeded. The app adds to the experience of attendees and provides opportunities for a more interactive and engaging conference experience.

Certainly apps aren’t the sole solution to the problems legal conference organizers are facing. More innovation is required to meet the evolving expectations of 21st century lawyers. But developing conference apps that actually add to the attendees’ experience is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, and these apps are an important piece of the puzzle.


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 @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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