Legalweek 2024: More Than Just E-Discovery

Historically, Legalweek emphasized e-discovery in its sessions and vendor lineup. However, this year, Legalweek moved beyond its traditional focus, with discussions of AI and new product launches taking the center stage. Here are 4 of the biggest takeaways from this year’s conference: 

1. Artificial Intelligence

AI was the central theme of most sessions, as approximately 30% of all sessions centered on AI. However, unlike other legal tech conferences, Legalweek looked beyond the initial buzz of large language models by diving deeper into what AI means for the industry, such as the speculative costs of early adoption for AI tools and the extent to which AI will actually revolutionize the landscape. There were three primary themes among all the AI sessions, (1) the practical implementation and prospective use cases for AI in the industry, (2) key ethical and regulatory considerations when implementing AI in one’s practice, and (3) future trends and the evolution of AI in law. One notable panel that highlighted the practicality of Legalweek’s AI sessions was, “How the American Arbitration Association Embraced AI to Manage Complex Internal Case Files, Forms, Data and External Workflow.” This session demonstrated how organizations can realistically resolve its clients internal and external pain points through the innovative and democratic use of AI programs. 

2. Product Launches

Several companies kickstarted the new year with hard launches of new products and functionalities at Legalweek. Below are some of the key launches that took place: 

• Courtroom Insight launched its Lawyer Directory, which aggregates private internal data, dynamically updated proprietary data, and integrated partner content into one centralized platform. Its dynamically updated lawyer data includes detailed educational backgrounds, work histories, clerkships, admissions, subject matter expertise, and self-reported diversity information.

• Consillo revealed Complete AI, a suite of e-discovery solutions powered by generative AI, aimed at streamlining investigations, document summaries, sensitive data analysis, and risk assessment.

• DISCO introduced Cecilia Deposition Summaries Platform, a platform utilizing generative AI to automatically create deposition summaries from transcripts, allowing users to navigate key points with links and citations, organized chronologically or by topic.

• Exterro released Exterro Assist, a generative AI assistant in a chatbot-style interface, trained on client data to assist with e-discovery, privacy, data governance, forensic investigations, and cybersecurity tasks.

• Wolters Kluwer enhanced Legisway with a functionality to help companies comply with the beneficial ownership reporting rule under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), facilitating the identification and curation of beneficial ownership information.

3. Organizational Tracks

Several organizations hosted their own tracks of sessions during Legalweek. Two prominent organizations with specialized tracks included ILTA and AALL. By hosting tracks, attendees were able to gain exposure to both the organizations as well as what topics are popular within each organization’s respective spaces. This was a successful marketing tool that we anticipate being implemented at future events in 2024. 

4. The Funding Gap

Most legal week sessions and vendors geared their efforts towards large law firms and corporations. While this is undoubtedly an efficient strategy for driving revenue, it raised concerns about the direction of the legal tech industry and whether it will become more balanced to meet the needs of other, lower income demographics, such as legal aid societies and pro-bono programs. This prompted Bob Ambrogi, legal technology journalist, to comment, “However you figure it, the conclusion is unavoidable that the vast majority of funding in legal tech is going to products that serve the legal needs of only a small minority, while tech devoted to serving the vast majority of legal needs receives only a miniscule portion of that money.”  

Overall, Legalweek 2024 was filled with exciting news and speculation about the legal tech industry at the outset of the year. The conference undoubtedly set the tone for future conferences this year.