Next stop on the legal technology circuit: Las Vegas—for the International Legal Technology Association’s ILTACON 2015, the annual frenzy of great panels, a super exhibit hall, amazing vendor parties and networking, networking, networking. (Did I say networking?) It opens Sunday (8/30) and runs through Thursday (Sept. 3).

This year’s conference website is smart, elegant and very easy to navigate. It boasts an attractive fresh design, with a very hip color palette. (Be sure to download the app.)

I’ve always thought that ILTA’s August annual meeting (this year at Caesar’s Palace) is the yin to ALM’s Legaltech New York yang. The two conferences’ audiences overlap (lawyers, legal tech professionals, vendors, consultants and journalists) but the agendas are opposite: LTNY focuses its three days primarily on the exhibit hall; keynotes and panels are secondary (most, if not all, are sponsored). At ILTA, it’s primarily about the panels, with 400+ peer-to-peer volunteer speakers. The ILTA exhibit hall is extremely valuable, but the panels are the richest aspects of the five-day conference. Each model works well, so much so that it’s not surprising that ILTA and ALM are frequent partners.

Comfortable Shoes

Best advice: wear very, very comfortable shoes and don’t worry about that ice cream cone because you will most definitely walk it off over the course of each day. The venue is gigantic. The exhibit hall opens Monday night (8/31) with a big party—your first chance to visit the almost 200 vendors from A (Accellion) to Z (Zia Consulting). And check out the Wednesday night parties—many vendor events have become legendary (such as last year’s Catalyst/DSi Nashville party at country music legend John Rich’s home).

Keynotes

• Monday’s keynote features Ken Robinson, presenting “The Element: How Finding YourPassion Changes Everything.”

• Tuesday’s workshop features Matt Homann, CEO of Kendeo, who offers “The Need for Speed: Rapid-Fire Provlem Solving in a Time Starved World.”

• ILTA almost always features a comedian, and Wednesday offers Mark Nizer, “Comedian and Juggler Extraordinaire” on “Multi-tasking: Making More of Your Time Count.”

Panels
ILTA always makes it realllllllly difficult to chose which panels to attend. Check out the “summary grid” before you get there. Among the offerings of potential interest to the CodeX crowd:

• #ILTA077: “A Candid Conversation with Thomson Reuters Technology Leaders,” featuring Jeffrey Brandt (editor of PinHawk’s great Law Technology Daily Digest); Craig Larson (TR West); Eric Sugden (TR Elite); Mick Atton (TR); and David Curle (TR) (who is very active in CodeX). Tuesday, 9/1, 1:30-2:30 p.m.

• #ILTA038: “Help! More Women Needed.” Panelists include Donna Payne (PayneGroup); Constance Hoffman (Bryan Cave); Sheryl Nolan (Microsoft Corp. Legal and Corporate Affairs.)” Monday, 8/31, 4-5 p.m.

• #ILTA119: I’m moderating “Disruption is Now: It’s Not Just for Big Law,” with Dera Nevin (Proskauer Rose), Michael Arkfeld (Arkfeld & Associates), Ron Dolin (Radical Concepts) and Dan Lear (Avvo). Weds., 9/2, 1:30-2:30 p.m.

• ILTA041: “Is Big Data in Legal a Figment of Our Imaginations?” Judy Selby (Baker & Hostetler), Brynmore Bowen (Schulte Roth & Zabel), Jobst Elster (InsideLegal.com), Eric Hunter (Bradford & Barthel), Galina Datskovsky (Vaporstream), Paul Starrett (Starrett Consulting and Investigative Services). Monday, 8/31, 4-5 p.m.

• #ILTA180 “A Conversation with U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck,” with Mary Pat Poteet (Project Leadership Associates) Thurs. 9/3, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

Other panels with innovation themes:
• “Frugal Innovation: Beyond Big Budgets.”
• “Watson, I Need You! Augmented Intelligence for Legal.”
• “The Rise of the Machine: Threat, Opportunity or Science Fiction?”
• “Fail Forward: Failure as a Foundation for Success.”
• “Revolutionary Integrations: It’s a Technology Mashup.”
• “Building Your Firm’s Innovation Engine (Part 1) and (Part 2).”
• “Innovation Through Automation: Implementing Effective Document Assembly.”
• “Transformers: Lawyers as Agents of Change? In Disguise?”

Bloomberg Law Twitter Takeover

On Wednesday, at 6 p.m. (Eastern), I have been invited to conduct a “Bloomberg Law Twitter Takeover” from Las Vegas!
I hope you will dive in and ask me lots of questions!  It should
be a blast! #BLAWTakeover.