LegalTech NY, the east coast’s annual legal technology conference was once again hosted at the NY Hilton on February 4-6, 2014. The weather was cold and blustery and the plowed piles of rock-hard snow were almost as deep as the crowds attending Information Governance (IG) sessions led by Bennett Borden and Barclay Blair.
Through three days of programming and networking, what I found most interesting about LT 2014 was that the scope of legal technology was expanding at a rapid pace. In the spirit of litigation preparedness, we seem to be moving from a reactive eDiscovery approach to data toward a proactive understanding of “big data” through Information Governance. As a discipline, IG has developed as technology allows for the sophisticated categorization, analysis and understanding of data on an enterprise level.
The conference-wide “focus” on process, preparedness and efficiency, rather than on new technology per se, has moved observers to describe LegalTech 2014 as, “nothing new.” I think that this description highlights an interesting difference between attorneys and legal technologists (obviously, these are not wholly separate demographics). I assert that LegalTech is not the technology-centric Detroit Auto Show nor the Consumer Electronics Show. For attorneys, it’s not about the product, it’s about how you use, expense and defend the product. As an eDiscovery attorney, I attend LegalTech to learn more about proven technology so that I may exploit resources on behalf of clients. New technology is critical to advancing the long-term best interests of clients, corporate and private practice and government but, a holistic, defensible process inspired by a new product is imperative.
In a profession built on precedence and the “conservative” expansion of jurisprudence, eDiscovery attorneys are charged with being as cutting-edge as prudence, courts and clients allow. That is not to suggest that we, as attorneys, cannot lead the horse to water and that we cannot be innovative. However, our role is highly integrated on an organizational level and inextricably connected to substantive issues and caselaw. Let’s take a beat and absorb the impact and influence of how technology creates legal process and not products.
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