Technology

The Conference Formerly Known As Legaltech Takes Shape As Legalweek

The 'Legalweek' concept worked better this year than last, and we'll see how ALM tinkers with the formula in 2019.

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I have a Super Bowl tradition, and it has nothing to do with football. Every year, either the week before or the week after the Super Bowl, I am in New York City, consumed by the craziness that is the three days of Legaltech, long one of the leading legal technology conferences.

Or should I say that “was” Legaltech, given that last year, ALM, the company that owns and produces the conference, rebranded it as Legalweek: The Experience, an expanded version that encompasses multiple conferences. This year, they included the venerable Legaltech, as well as LegalCIO, LegalMarketing, the Business of Law Forum, and the Legal Diversity & Talent Management Forum. There were also three standalone workshops devoted to artificial intelligence, in-house leadership, and solo practice.

If my history is correct, Legaltech (originally called Legal Tech) started in 1982, originally produced by Janet Felleman, in partnership with Price Waterhouse, to help attorneys learn how to use and manage technology in the law office. She ran it until 2001, when it was taken over by the National Law Publishing Company, which was publisher of the The National Law Journal and The New York Law Journal. In 1997, the American Lawyer Group — the predecessor to today’s ALM — acquired that company, and with it, the Legaltech conference.

For 17 years after ALM acquired the conference, it was overseen by one executive, Henry Dicker. As I noted in a 2016 blog post when Dicker left ALM to become chief revenue officer at the eDiscovery and digital forensics company Franklin Data, he was long considered the conference’s chief architect.

“Henry’s departure,” I wrote at the time, “marks the end of one era for Legaltech and the start of the next.”

That “next” started just a month later, when ALM brought on John Stuttard, a trade show veteran, to lead its global events division. It was Stuttard’s idea to revamp the conference as Legalweek, aiming broaden its scope and offer a little something for everyone.

It was not a bad idea, given that, as I wrote here last year, Legaltech was crying out for a shake-up. What was once a showcase of varied hardware and software products and educational programs had become so dominated by one theme — eDiscovery — that it threatened to suffocate the life out of Legaltech.

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Last year, the first year of Legalweek, the concept had mixed results. The Legaltech part of it was much like Legaltechs of the past. There seemed to be a bit fewer companies displaying their wares in the exhibit hall, but in its overall programming and activity, the conference seemed to be on par with other recent Legaltech shows.

However, in that first year, the Legalweek part of it seemed almost invisible. Many attendees seemed oblivious to the conference’s parallel tracks. One, the LegalSmallFirm track designed to bring more smaller-firm lawyers into the conference, seemed to fail miserably, with only 30 or 40 people in a ballroom with a capacity of 600.

“Still, I give ALM and Stuttard credit for trying to shake things up,” I wrote in my post-mortem after last year’s show. “And for a first effort, it went well. No doubt, Legalweek will return next year, and, no doubt, ‘the experience’ will be more refined.”

Turns out, this year it was more refined. This year, people “got” the Legalweek concept to a far greater extent than they did last year, it seemed to me. Overall this year, the number of exhibitors was down, but attendance was up. It is impossible to say what accounted for the rise in attendance, but I suspect the varied Legalweek programming helped.

In a notable way, ALM broke from the past with this year’s show. For most of the years that ALM has run Legaltech, it has treated the conference as almost a separate entity, with little interplay between Legaltech and other ALM divisions, most notably the news and editorial division for which it is best known. In fact, for many years, ALM prohibited its editorial staff from even covering Legaltech, because of the feared conflict of interest.

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This year, that changed. In its current incarnation, ALM consists of three overarching divisions — the editorial publications and media for which it is best known; ALM Intelligence, which sells various products and services derived from its many years of surveys and reports on the legal profession; and ALM Events, the division that runs Legalweek and other conferences.

This year, for the first time that I can remember, all three of those divisions were front and center at the conference. Perhaps the most successful addition to this year’s conference was the Business of Law Forum, a two-day program dedicated to discussing the future course of innovation in the legal industry and how law firms can capitalize on coming changes.

This forum was conceived and put together by ALM editors and reporters who cover the business of law, led by Gina Passarella Cipriani, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer. I cannot remember a prior time when ALM editorial staff played so prominent a role in organizing and presenting a program or track at Legaltech.

The same was true for ALM Intelligence. For the second year, the division’s research was highlighted in the conference’s opening “state of the industry” session. Beyond that, however, ALM research seemed to be frequently referenced by speakers and Patrick Fuller, vice president of ALM Intelligence, seemed to be a ubiquitous moderator.

This strikes me as the right approach for ALM — to bring all its strengths to bear in presenting this conference. It made it a richer conference, from a content perspective, and fueled the Legalweek concept.

Can ALM do better with Legalweek? Absolutely. I agree completely with all of the changes recommended by Ed Sohn in his column last week (except banish moderators, not just because I was one, but because I believe a good moderator can enhance a panel). And I would add two more urgent recommendations:

  • Diversify the speakers. I can’t offer any hard-and-fast numbers, but it sure seemed that white males made up far too much of the speaker composition this year.
  • Create a seating area. Trust me, every Legalweek attendee who wants to sit down and have a conversation with someone is sick of circling the Hilton in search of a bench or seat. A conference venue should be designed to promote dialogue among attendees, not obstruct it.

I am not sure what the future holds for Legalweek. If the exhibit hall continues to shrink, it will not be sustainable in its present form. Frankly, I’m still not sold on the Legalweek concept in general — maybe all its components warrant their own separate conferences. But it worked better this year than last, and I will look forward to seeing how ALM tinkers with the formula in 2019.

Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert 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).

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