New York Legal Tech 2010
February 2nd, 2010 | No Comments
ALM’s New York LegalTech – 2010
The atmosphere was close to normal yet somewhat more subdued it seemed. Having a keynote by Malcolm Gladwell of Blink and Tipping Point was a coo for NYLT. To me, it showed that they’re looking outside the box and looking ahead. This years speech was received well, yet ended early. Very interesting guy, interesting speech.
It’s strange, we come year after year. We see the same faces. We walk the same halls and grab the same (or slightly different) swag. I saw more faces and hands holding more smart-phones. I’ve said it before, what the Paris Air Show is to the Spy community, NYLT is to the Lit Support community. Even in a down economy, many people came great distances.
I was talking to the nice folks who have the coffee spot, just as you go into the main exhibition hall. I asked a couple of folks how it was going, how they were doing and one finally said, “I’m serving coffee to folks who will never buy my service” – I commented “it’s not easy having to caffeinate an entire convention, year after year. “
They had the third floor closed this year. This is the first time I recall it being closed in the lord-knows-how-many-years-I’ve-been-coming equation.
LegalTech has been doing a great job. The tracks were pretty well thought out and attended on the first day. New this year was the “On Demand” capabilities ALM served up. Very slick indeed and made it possible for those unable to attend…well, to attend.
The talk in our society is on the economy, on jobs and from what I was able to ascertain, there were more folks looking for job or looking for a better job at NYLT this year than last. Where 2009 was bad to yours truly, it was worse on many many others. For all the talk about things getting better, I’m not seeing it. I think the state of this industry may be getting worse.
I’ll give you an update on Day two later this evening.
