Dan Lear has more energy than a dozen Energizer bunnies and is a lot smarter. He’s a long-time CodeXista and is director of industry relations at Avvo.

At the recent ILTACon (the International Legal Technology Association annual conference), Lear participated in the CodeX-dominated panel,  “Disruption is Now: It’s Not Just for Big Law,” which also included Ron Dolin, Michael Arkfeld and Dera Nevin. (I moderated the panel.)

As if that wasn’t enough, Lear also put together a terrific event, IgniteLaw Las Vegas, held at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel. ILTA tradition is that Wednesday evening is a “free” night and many vendors put on lavish parties and dinners; IgniteLaw was late afternoon (5 p.m.) perfectly timed so that invitees wouldn’t miss the evening options.

It was a delightful and deliciously intimate event, with fascinating pitches, great munchies and excellent beverages. Let me turn the mic over to Dan, with his thank you letter to the attendees:

“Twenty  pitches, 700 voters, seven speakers, 35 minutes, and 140 slides later, IgniteLaw Las Vegas is in the bag! And it was awesome. For those who made it out, thank you so much for your support! For those who didn’t, here are some of my favorite moments:

• Niki Black‘s humorous and enlightening comparisons between Donald Trump and 21st Century Law Practice Management skills. Niki has convinced me that the Trumpmeister may actually be the 21st century Yogi Berra.   (Monica’s note: She stole the show!)

• Joshua Lenon’s hard-headed case that the baby boomers ruined the legal profession. And the good-natured response from the baby boomers in the audience.

• Marc Cerniglia‘s straightforward and energetic presentation exhorting lawyers to think beyond Google for marketing.

• Joe Wallin‘s statement “Data? Who needs data?!?!” And the reaction from a few select people in the audience.

• Erika Pagano‘s GIF-filled presentation and her absolute mastery of the hard-to-master Ignite format.

• Cian O’Sullivan‘s challenge to attendees to do as he did with his company, Beagle, and fix something that sucks. (O’Sullivan is a new CodeX Fellow!)

And finally, of course, Mike Whelan‘s calling out of Brian Tannebaum.

At the last minute we had the opportunity to record the audio of the event and if all goes well, it should be available in the next few weeks. We’ll also make the slides used for the event available so others can follow along at home. Look for an email on that soon. We also have pictures from the good people at Texas A&M that will be on the website shortly.

Finally, Robert Richards put together a Twitter Storify of the event. Check it out. A Twitter search for the #ignitelawlv hashtag will also get you the action as it happened.

I want to give a final thank you to our great sponsors:
Cloud Level: Avvo, Spotlight Branding, Texas A&M School of Law
Mainframe Level: MyCase
Community Level: Kira Systems, Everlaw
Huge thanks to everyone who pitched, voted, came and talked. It was a great event! One more email once the audio is (hopefully) available then we’ll call it good.”

Thanks Dan! Great event & great summary!