In a post here six years ago entitled The two tech trade shows to attend, I wrote:
Having attended way too many legal-technology trade shows over the course of my career, I can state with certainty that there are only two each year you really should attend if you care about keeping current with the field — LegalTech New York in January and ABA TechShow in April. Sure, there are probably hundreds of technology trade shows put on by local, state and national bars and private companies. But companies that know anything about the legal market save their most important announcements of new product launches and major upgrades for these shows.
My opinion has not changed. With this year’s LegalTech now history, it is time to gear up for ABA TechShow 2009. It takes place April 2-4 at the Hilton Chicago.
You may notice a number of legal bloggers talking about TechShow today and tomorrow. The show’s organizers are encouraging bloggers to spread the word about TechShow in a two-day “Blawger Blitz.” They even sent out a list of talking points.
But no blitzes or bullet points are needed to get me to urge you attend. I’ve blogged about TechShow dozens of times over the years. I attend as often as I’m able, I’ve had the honor to speak there several times, and I’ve even podcast live from TechShow. It is generally a very different show than LegalTech. The most notable difference is that it skews more towards lawyers in solo and small firms than does LegalTech. In fact, the second day of the show, Friday, is Solo and Small Firm Day, with a special one-day admission price and two special tracks of programming.
The TechShow Web site has everything you need to know about speakers, programs and registration. Updates and related information are posted at the TechShow Blog. Hope to see you in Chicago in April.
Even if you were not able to attend the just-concluded LegalTech 2009 show in New York, you can sample the sights and sounds thanks to various sources:
Two projects of mine, a blog and a podcast, are included on the ABA Journal’s second annual listing of The Blawg 100, the editors’ picks of the best legal blogs. Legal Blog Watch, the Law.com-sponsored blog I cowrite with Carolyn Elefant, won recognition in the News category, and Lawyer2Lawyer, the podcast I cohost with J. Craig Williams, won a place in the Podcast category.
Still to come are the readers’ choice awards. The winner in each category wins admission to the ABA’s annual Techshow. Head on over and cast your ballot before voting ends Jan. 2.
I pass along this noteworthy notice:
The James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering is awarded once a year by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association at the Annual ABA Techshow in Chicago. The award is named for James I. Keane, the founding chair of the ABA eLawyering Task Force. The Task Force was created in 2000, when ABA President William G. Paul, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, took the unusual and creative step of asking a section to assume responsibility for one of his presidential initiatives, namely an examination of ways that lawyers could use the Internet and other electronic resources to deliver legal services to people of moderate means more efficiently and effectively. Last year’s recipient was the law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C., based in Chicago, for the web site at Illinoisdivorce.com. The ABA eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section will review the nominations and select the recipient. The award guidelines and nomination forms can be found here. Law firms can nominate themselves. The deadline for submission is Jan. 15, 2009.
If you know of anyone who might be interested in applying for this award, please encourage them to apply. And feel free to repost.
By way of Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal, I learned of David Lat’s Project Truman Show. Lat is known among legal bloggers as author of the legal gossip blog Above the Law, where he often delves into other people’s private moments. But via his personal blog, he is now promising to expose his own weighty matters and belly up to the privacy bar — and I mean that literally. As he undertakes a regimen to shed pounds, he promises to track his progress every evening on his blog, complete with daily shirtless photos of his (shrinking?) belly.
But Lat is by no means the first to post daily belly pix on the Web. One of the “offbeat” sites I showed at the 2004 60 Sites in 60 Minutes presentation at ABA TechShow was John Stone Fitness, the Web site of a man who, like Lat, decided to get in shape and post daily photos of his progress, from pot-bellied slouch to lean, mean fitness machine.
So while David Lat will not be the first to expose his body-fat ratio for the world to see online, he probably will be the first lawyer to do so.
With LegalTech New York ready to go next week, affiliates Law.com and Law Technology News today announced a special platform to showcase those who will blogging from or about the Feb. 5-7 event. As many of you know, I coauthor Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch together with Carolyn Elefant. During LegalTech, Law.com will turn over Legal Blog Watch and its daily e-mail alert to all bloggers covering the show. Law.com Executive Editor David Snow explained the plan in an e-mail he sent today to a number of bloggers:
“If you’re planning to attend LTNY and blog about it, please drop us a line now at legalblogwatch@alm.com with the name of the blog and the bloggers. That way we’ll know who to expect to hear from next week, and we’ll be able to post a note about our blogger-participants.“After you post on your blog, send us the URL (permalink) with an intro sentence about the post to legalblogwatch@alm.com. Our Legal Blog Watch editor will post them — in a style similar to that of the EDD Update Blog. Be sure to include your name, the blog name, your phone number and email address in case we need to contact you.
“We’ll highlight this LTNY Special Edition of Legal Blog Watch on Law.com, the Law Technology News website, Law.com Legal Technology and our associated blogs: EDD Update, Sean Doherty’s Law.com Legal Technology and Monica Bay’s The Common Scold.”
Two other important notes.
I will be at LegalTech Tuesday and Wednesday and look forward to meeting many, many bloggers while I’m there.
If you have not signed up for next week’s LegalTech New York, whaddya waiting for? The conference — Feb. 5 to 7 at the New York Hilton — continues year after year to be one of the two top annual legal technology events (along with ABA Techshow). The line-up of programs and speakers is impressive. Even if you’d rather not pay the registration fee, you can attend the exhibit hall for free — usually the single largest collection of legal-tech vendors of any show. If you’re not sold by either the programs or the exhibitors, then at least go for the schmoozing. If you do go, say hello; I’ll be there Tuesday and Wednesday.
[The following column originally appeared in print in March 2007. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]
Is your firm in the market for a technology upgrade but uncertain what to buy? For consumer-technology products, a shopper can find any number of buying guides. But what about legal-technology shoppers?
As it turns out, guidance is available, provided you know where to look. Here is a quick tour of sites to check if you are in the market for legal technology.
Various law-related blogs report on new software and hardware products for lawyers. Check their current postings and their archives for products that interest you. Among the technology blogs worth checking:
With this list of sites and some virtual shoe leather, you should be able to find guidance on just about any legal technology product.
The popular public-records search site SearchSystems.net has won a federal court judgment of $780,000 against the competing site CourtsOnline, according to this press release. A federal judge in San Francisco entered the order against the site’s creator, Mark Musselman, for stealing content from SearchSystems.net, the release says. The order also bars Musselman and his associates from operating any Web business relating to public records access.
I wrote about SearchSystems in a 2004 column, Useful Search Tools You May Not Know About, and as part of my 60 Sites in 60 Minutes presentation at the 2004 ABA Techshow.
