Legal Operations

3 Events Legal Operations Professionals Should Attend This Year

Legal operations folks -- and indeed the broader legal community -- will find value and useful information at all three conferences.

By  
on

The year is half over, Summer is here, and we’re already a third of the way through July. As you contemplate the rest of the year and what you may be planning in terms of conferences, professional development training, and continuing legal education, it makes sense to consider some of the popular upcoming legal industry events that are worth attending.

ILTACON (August 18-22) Orlando, FL

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) puts on ILTACON every August and have been doing so for about 30 years. It is one of the largest legal technology conferences held each year and it is usually well attended by law firm information technology leaders and staff, litigation support professionals, corporate legal departments, government, and other tech-oriented people in the legal industry. ILTA boasts over 1,400 member entities and a strong corps of volunteers who develop content and events across the legal operations spectrum.

Every year, the leadership and about 40 volunteers come together to plan and develop content for the four-day educational conference. This year, the sessions feature everything you might need in legal technology, from issues facing the C-Suite to knowledge management and core IT infrastructure or security issues. There are sessions for corporate legal department professionals, litigation support, business analytics, marketing, and innovators. ILTA’s website does a good job of outlining the areas of interest, and you can register here.

PREX 2019 (September 17-19) Chicago, IL

Hosted by the great people at Zapproved, the PREX Conference is also an educational conference that brings together corporate legal operations professionals, lawyers, judges, and other experts from across the legal industry. Zapproved, of course, brought its flagship product, Legal Hold Pro, to the eDiscovery industry 10 years ago. Today they offer a suite of eDiscovery software tools designed to empower in-house legal teams to efficiently and sensibly manage ediscovery projects.

PREX is well attended by corporate legal personnel and the session speakers invariably feature a cornucopia of the industry’s best and brightest judges, lawyers and legal operations professionals. The conference starts with the ZDiscovery User Group, a workshop for users of Zapproved software. Session tracks include best practices in eDiscovery, eDiscovery 101, and a leadership track. PREX often features quality keynote addresses and this year is no different. PREX began as a conference on preservation excellence; today, it is that and a whole lot more. Check out the sessions on the website and register here.

Sponsored

Relativity Fest (October 20-23) Chicago, IL

Early on, it became apparent that Relativity Fest was not a typical legal industry conference. It started largely as a user conference for what back then were kCura customers. Now Relativity’s conference has the feel of a high-end tech show with a focus on product, but it’s also got lots of education and training. And it has grown significantly. Today “Fest” boasts thousands of attendees from every corner of the globe, including litigation support professionals from firms, the government, corporate legal, and service providers. Lawyers, judges, paralegals, legal operations, and IT administrators also attend Fest.

Relativity Fest has a few unique offerings, including training workshops and certification exams and lots of hands-on sessions developed to increase proficiency in their software at various levels of skill. They also have a developer summit, a legal industry education track, and a professional development track. All the session content can be viewed on the conference website, and registration is available here.

These brief summaries are not a review or comparison of these conferences. Each has its own features and strengths. Rather, as someone who has attended and presented at each, I am confident that legal operations folks — and indeed the broader legal community — will find value and useful information at all three.

Sponsored

Mike Quartararo

Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.

Topics

, , , , ,