How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly. — The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926
When I started writing about legal tech a decade or so ago, it was a sleepy business. Most of the time not all that much happened… which made it pretty easy to keep up with what was going on. The legal tech conferences were subdued little affairs. The smaller vendors and startups scraped by and tried to find enough money to keep the lights on. The bigger ones moseyed along, not terribly concerned about competition or being overtaken by smaller players. As you might imagine, real innovation was rare and slow.
Real change occurred slowly and almost imperceptibly, if it occurred at all. Then on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT was announced and the legal tech world exploded. Shortly thereafter, big money began to pour into legal tech as equity capital and venture investors realized there could be money to be made. Lots of money. Nonlegal giants like Microsoft and Google began to get more heavily involved. And of late, even the giant general purpose LLM providers like OpenAI and Anthropic started to jump into legal.
And the vendors jacked up the development of platforms to take advantage of LLMs and what they could do. Startups like Harvey went from $0 to raising $1 billion virtually overnight. IPOs took off. And many of those vendors who had been scraping by suddenly found themselves with more investor money than they knew what to do with. Literally.
Then came the celebrities. Some even hired well-know actors like Gabriel Macht and Jude Law as “spokesmen.” One even partnered with Aaron Judge and, appropriately, the New York Yankees. Others sponsored professional sports teams and golf tournaments. Legal tech has gone prime time.
To say the change in the legal tech world happened gradually, then suddenly is an understatement. Ironically, today it feels like the Roaring Twenties.
But it’s one thing to read about the tsunami that’s altered the legal tech universe. It’s quite another to see it and hear it in person. But that’s exactly what happened at this year’s ILTACON. Legal tech is now big business. It’s arrived. For better or worse.
The Presser
All this became apparent at the initial ILTACON presser. Gone was a press room located miles away from the action. Gone was the lack of refreshments. Gone was the early morning briefing where ILTA reps said as little as possible. Gone was a press corps of four, maybe five people.
Instead, it was standing room only. And we now get tasty hors d’oeuvres and a bar. An open bar! Now we’re talking.
More importantly, we got a remarkably candid, transparent, and energetic presentation that lasted over an hour. That got a round of applause at the end.
And what ILTA representatives told us in the presser tells you everything you want to know about the business of legal tech today:
• Last year, the closing overall ILTACON attendance was 4,606. This year, first-day attendance stood at 5,625. That’s an increase of over 22% over last year. And by day three, it was 5,700.
• ILTA now takes up every square inch of the giant Gaylord Convention space. Every square inch of more than 700,000 square feet.
• By May, all the 2,888 rooms in the Gaylord hotel were snatched up, requiring the use of nine overflow hotel sites.
• There are a record 241 exhibitor booths in the exhibit hall, weighing a collective 3 tons.
• International attendance is up substantially.
• CIOs and, says ILTA, managing partners’ attendance is up substantially. Imagine. Managing partners. At a legal tech conference.
If this doesn’t tell you legal tech is in a brave new world, nothing will.
And, by necessity, ILTA is upping its game and assuming even more growth and demand. It’s now partnering with the consulting company, Cosmonaut, to help with future event planning, among other things. That’s a clear signal that the conference has reached a size where more professional expertise is necessary.
ILTA is also partnering with ACEDS and BARBRI to offer more content in the future. It’s talking about more international- and niche-directed programming. And It’s even openly hinting at the possibility and need of moving out of convention spaces attached to hotels and into stand-alone convention spaces, much like LegalWeek did this year. (And already incurring the expected crumbling along the way.) They didn’t say it, but if business keeps going like it is, that move is inevitable.
Clearly ILTA, the premier legal tech organization, has taken notice of not only where the industry is but also where it is going.
The Exhibit Space
The ILTA folks mentioned the exhibit hall several times in the presser. They talked about how it had grown and took on a more sophisticated and energetic atmosphere. But that didn’t prepare us for what we saw when it opened. An Exhibit Hall that looked and sounded like it belonged at CES. Exhibitor spaces that looked less like sales booths and more like attractions.
Big players taking so much exhibit space that ILTA talked openly in the presser about limiting the space a single exhibitor could take in the future. Of course, it won’t; the more space taken, the more money. And if you are thinking you will need to move to a bigger space anyway, you of course want to sell all the square footage you can.
And exhibitors were spending money in the space like there is no tomorrow. Swanky coffee bars. Fancy cocktail bars. Elaborate displays. A Lamborghini on the floor. (You couldn’t drive it.)
No puppies at this show. It’s the big time.
The Parties
Speaking of spending money. Vendor parties used to mean a drab bar, little to no entertainment, and a few skimpy eats. No more. Now they are in exotic and swanky locations. Locations that are substantially redone by vendors to make them Taj Mahals for the party.
But the biggest indication that legal tech is now big business is the entertainment. Groups and performers like Little Big Town, Laura Bell Bundy, Sheryl Crow, and Lady A. All appeared at this year’s ILTACON vendor parties. Other recent conferences included performers like Nelly, Flo Rida, and Flavor Flav.
Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
The Keynotes
You can also get a sense of the change by looking at the keynote speakers at tech conferences. ILTACON included well-known and presumably expensive speakers like Jim Abbott and Dr. Kevin Fong. Other conferences have featured sports figures like Eli Manning, actors like Rob Lowe and Jake Gyllenhaal. The message is that legal tech is so big that only big names will do.
But Why?
So what changed? How did legal tech go overnight from an ignored backwater to Sheryl and Lady A? In a word, AI.
AI made investors and vendors take notice of an industry that could be completely disrupted by a revolutionary tool. A tool that could upend an estimated over $1 trillion industry. If you believe a new technology can fundamentally remake even part of a trillion-dollar market that hasn’t changed all that much in decades, it’s not hard to start seeing dollar signs. Big dollar signs. And that’s exactly what has happened.
I talked with the CEO of ILTA, Joy Heath Rush, about this very thing. “AI was the trigger,” Rush told me. “Certain technologies can disrupt an entire industry. And the law is now seen as a big industry that can be disrupted.”
There’s also the FOMO effect. Venture capital and private equity money is rushing to AI. Anything AI. It’s a feeding frenzy. Better get it while the getting is good.
Deja Vu All Over Again?
But in the midst of all the glitz, glamor, and money, it’s good to recall what George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In many ways, it feels like we are in the midst of the legal tech Roaring Twenties. (Don’t get any ideas, I was not yet alive for the real Roaring Twenties. I’m not that old). But the years of the Great Gatsby were followed by the crash. The Dust Bowl. Failed businesses. Lost fortunes. Devastated individuals. The drunken party was over.
So while we may be astounded and amazed by where legal tech is today, it can change just as quickly to a burst bubble. The change from the Roaring Twenties to bankruptcy can happen just as suddenly.
It’s important to remember that the practice of law, for all the technology and money now swirling around it, remains fundamentally about people, judgment, communication, and persuasion.
AI may change some things. But not what the practice is really about. Even if some things change gradually, then suddenly.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.