LegalTech is in NYC this week: here is why you should go if you can

Our team arrived in NYC yesterday for LegalTech New York.  It opens today (February 1st) for 3 days.  It will be held at The Hilton New York (1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York  1-212-586-7000).

The show is presented by ALM Events, a producer of educational and networking events.  And most of us know ALM through its various media outlets/brands:  The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, Law.com, Law Journal Press, The National Law Journal, etc. 

It is the world’s largest legal technology conference and trade show.  Last year the show attracted nearly 13,000 attendees and featured almost 300 exhibiting companies. The 2010 conference will offer more than 60 educational sessions for attendees on topics ranging from electronic discovery and knowledge management to emerging technologies.  

Each day, the sessions are parsed into multiple tracks including: Risk Management, General Counsel, Web 3.0, Intelligence, Knowledge Management, International E-Discovery, ILTA Advanced IT, Comprehensive Recordkeeping, and Emerging Technology.

We’ll be posting some more interviews as part of our series on e-discovery (click here) with folks from Fios, FTI Technology, Recommind, and LDM Global.  We’ll also have a video chat with Jason R Baron and Ralph Losey,  plus Chris Dale.  And we’ll have chats with George Socha and Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot.  Plus many others.

But there is always much too much to cover in such major events like this, even for a 4-person team.   Yes,we’ll try to cover all the vendors, and all the technology, but we intend to focus our substantive pieces/posts/reporting on:

1.  Developments in predictive coding and  computer assisted document categorization.

2.  Europe and Asia and cross-border e-discovery.

3.  The convergence of intelligence, intuition and information (the subject of Malcolm Gladwll’s keynote presentation on February 3rd.  See below.)

We have covered both LegalTech shows (New York and LA) because our membership base has expanded beyond our core of contract attorneys/temporary attorneys and contract forensics consultants to include paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, e-discovery vendors, legal media, and others. 

If you are contract attorney/temporary attorney or a contract forensics consultant or paralegal, or involved in some aspect of e-discovery work, and you are in NYC next week,  you should go.  No, not necessarily pay the $695 single-day attendance fee if you cannot afford it.  Because a lot of LegalTech events are open to everybody.  

For instance, you can get a pass to attend the Exhibits, the Keynote addresses, the General Sessions, and the Emerging Technologies Tracks & SuperSessions all for free.  Just go to the registration page  (click here)  and you’ll see the box (ok, it’s a circle) to attend those things for $0.0.  

Wny go to the exhibit hall and see vendors?  

1. To learn more about e-discovery technology and the e-discovery industry.
2. For contract attorneys, to meet with vendors who are on the “right-side” (document review and production) of the EDRM like Applied Discovery, CaseCentral, Clearwell Systems, Fios, Trilantic, and many others.  They either have an internal document review/production component or are aligned with partners that do.  As we have said in multiple posts, many vendors now handle all elements of the EDRM (gee,how many times at LegalTech are we going to hear “end-to-end solutions”?)  So check it all out.  All the major players will be in one spot. 
3. If you are a forensics person or otherwise involved in e-discovery work, #2 applies to you, too, since you’ll find a vendors involved in all or part of every aspect of the EDRM.

Take your resume or business card.  Talk to people.  Make a connection.  The appropriate hiring person may not be there (the vendors are trying to sell stuff.  duh.) but ask for an appropriate contact, a person’s name/email.  Collect business cards.  Make something happen.  In the last two years we have met scores of Posse List members at LegalTech and other legal technology conference and trade shows and they were doing just that.  In the past year we have heard from over 300 of our contract attorney/contract paralegal Posse List members tell us they found jobs with vendors — and not just document review.  In data collection and processing, , forensics, product development, project management, etc. 

And some vendors are running special programs, also free.  For instance, CT Summation is running sessions off the Exhibit Hall on Feb 2nd from 9-12.   The Exhibit Hall hours are:

       Monday, February 1st                 10am to 5pm

       Tuesday, February 2nd               10am to 5pm

       Wednesday, February 3rd          10am to 3pm

Want a complete list of the vendors appearing?  Then click here.  You will get a list and a web link to each vendor’s website.   When you get to the Exhibit Hall you will receive a brochure that indicates the booth number of each vendor.

And the vendors will part with a brochure or two so you learn about their products, learn more about e-discovery.  They want to educate.  In our interview series (click here) you will note each vendor tries to educate on various e-discovery issues as well as honk their own horn. 

The series was developed as part of our efforts to provide a voice in the discussion around e-discovery, bringing together interviews, news summaries, and resources.  We do that in addition to providing job and project postings (click here to subscribe to our job lists).

And as we noted, some of the major LegalTech sessions are open to all.  For example: 

Feb 2nd at 9:00am:         Facebook:  Perspectives of Corporate eDiscovery and Social Media presented by:  Mark Howitson, Deputy General Counsel, Facebook

Feb 2^nd at 9:00am:          Epiq Systems SuperSessions on Controlling Discovery Expenses in 2010 (and CLE eligible)

Feb 3rd at 9:00am:           I3:  The Convergence of Intelligence, Intuition and Information presented by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers, Blink ,and The Tipping Point), Dr. Lisa Sanders (New York Times Columnist, Author of Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis), and David Craig (Chief Strategy Officer, Thomson Reuters)

Feb 3^rd starting at 10:30am:    Trilantic’s International SuperSession  regarding international disclosure matters.

There is tons more.  For the full event brochure click here.

And if you can’t make it, we’ll have full coverage through our Twitter posts on our home page, and you can also see them at www.twitter.com/posselist.  We are alo running  a live video stream of certain events on our home page courtsey of Applied Discovery.  And if you have any difficult accessing it you can also go here  you can also access it here: http://www.livestream.com/applieddiscovery .

Hope to see you at LegalTeh.