The nice people at IKON put on a great legal technology seminar in St. Louis yesterday. I learned a lot and took a lot of notes. Among other things, there was great coverage of electronic discovery, records management and legal tech from the corporate law department point of view (something I call “client-driven technology”).
It was well-attended (more than 70 people), but when they “qualified the audience,” there were only a handful of lawyers in the room.
The rest were IT staff, paralegals and legal administrators. I’ve noticed this trend over the last several months as I’ve attended legal technology and electronic discovery seminar sessions that are increasingly made up of IT people rather than lawyers.
Maybe I’m off target, but I feel that lawyers should want to hear a representative from the legal department of a major corporation talk about where they would like to go with their technology and how their law firms could help them. They might also like to know where their clients feel that their law firms are not responsive enough.
If you want one “take-away” to consider carefully, it was this: corporate legal departments are increasingly being called on to be part of the business team in terms of budgeting and other standard business approaches. Law firms that do not help them do that should expect to find a growing impatience. Electronic billing is one way to help.
I learned a good deal about the current state of affairs in electronic discovery, compliance and records management, and other things as well, but, looking back on my notes, I can’t help but notice this comment – “What is the mix of this audience and where are the lawyers?”
If you are one of those lawyers who seem to be staying away from good educational events on legal technology, let me encourage you to attend ABA TECHSHOW 2006. Hope to see you there. I guarantee that you’ll get a competitive advantage over the lawyers who seem to be isolating themselves from learning about the leading technology issues of the day that are front-and-center for their clients.
My thank you goes out to IKON for inviting me to this seminar and I’m glad I had a gap in my schedule to attend it. Well worth it and, if this show comes to your town, I recommend it.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy’s Legal Technology Central page.
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