Takeaways from ILTACON 2023
on Topics: Conferences | Legal Tech
The challenges that law firms face connected to leveraging legal data and legal technology to maintain a competitive advantage and drive revenue in a crowded marketplace are complex, nuanced, and continuously evolving.
As ILTACON 2023 laid bare for all in attendance, those challenges are here to stay. They will only become more intensified with the never-ending increase in the amount of data firms and their clients are expected to ingest, understand, and take advantage of, and as the introduction of more and more game changing technological advances, namely Generative AI and proprietary LLMs, are shifting the legal landscape that law firms are seeking to navigate.
In this blog, we’ll share our key takeaways from ILTACON 2023, including some general observations about the conference, UniCourt’s new use case specific legal data solutions released at ILTACON, the public launch of our newly published industry report with Baretz+Brunelle, some of our favorite panels and legal industry perspectives, and, of course, some pictures of the UniCourt Team throughout the conference.
ILTACON is BACK
ILTACON 2023 has been heralded by many in the legal tech space and law firm community as the comeback conference for the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) with over 3,400 registrants this year. While it did not beat the peak numbers from 2019, at over 3,800 attendees, this year’s conference was a stellar success.
As someone who loves to continuously poll others, I found from all of my conversations with law firm and legal department attendees, legal technology vendors, and ILTA staff, that this year had the overall feel that the ILTACON community was back. The energy in the educational sessions, in the vendor hall, the many afterparties, client dinners, and across the expansive Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort and the Yacht Club Resort was in the air and enlivening for all involved.
Compared to recent ILTACONs, the exhibit hall also had a continuous flow of traffic, even though it was one of the most expansive venues with 158 vendors in what felt like two life-size football fields. And even on the final Thursday morning, there was still a noticeable amount of traffic with curious law firm and legal department attendees looking for the next great solution to tackle the challenges they’re facing. We were also incredibly happy to see so many of our excellent clients stop by UniCourt’s booth this year to catch up and learn more about the UniCourt Enterprise API.
UniCourt’s Legal Data as a Service Solutions
This year at ILTACON, following the launch of the UniCourt Enterprise API at Legalweek 2023, we announced four of UniCourt’s core Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS) solutions to solve the ongoing legal data challenges and pain points law firms have to navigate.
Client Litigation Tracking and Retention for Law Firms
- Law firms have an ongoing need to retain and expand their client base by tracking their client’s litigation.
- By implementing the UniCourt Enterprise API, firms can be immediately notified when their existing clients face new litigation.
- This real-time state and federal litigation tracking capability allows firms to proactively offer timely assistance to clients often before their client is aware, further solidifying client relationships and positioning firms as trusted advisors.
Winning Client and Prospect RFPs for Law Firms
- Law firms often have to combine data from different applications in a manual, ad hoc, and inefficient way to respond to RFPs, making it exceedingly challenging to respond quickly and comprehensively with relevant experience data.
- By Implementing the UniCourt Enterprise API, law firms can obtain complete historical and continuously updated data sets of law firm and attorney litigation experience.
- This 360-degree view of experience data makes responding to RFPs more convenient, faster, and, ultimately, more successful in winning new business.
Docket Management for Law Firms
- Manually monitoring court dockets across multiple court systems introduces significant risk to firms and is an inefficient process.
- By implementing the UniCourt Enterprise API, docket data and court documents can flow directly into matter management and document management systems in real-time, enabling automated alerts and considerably decreasing the manual workloads of docketing teams.
- Streaming real-time docket data into critical systems empowers firms to confidently stay on top of growing case loads, further improving client outcomes and cementing their reputation for superior client service.
Litigation Data for Law Firm Data Warehouses
- Law firms use the UniCourt Enterprise API to pull real-time and historical litigation data into their data warehouses. Firms can switch from manual, risk-prone processes to streamline docket data collection.
- Using UniCourt’s advanced normalization, firms can finally clean up and deduplicate their master data and uniquely identify entities involved in litigation, such as parties, attorneys, law firms, judges, and more.
- This allows firms to unlock the true potential of their data by opening up a variety of business intelligence, legal analysis, and alerting use cases, including docket research, experience databases, legal analytics, client tracking, case tracking, ad hoc request, and more.
Want to learn more about how the UniCourt Enterprise API can help your firm with your legal data needs?
Download our free solutions briefs to get an inside look at how our LDaaS solutions are helping law firms tackle their persistent legal data problems.
UniCourt Launches Report on Industry Insights from Am Law CMOs
In addition to the release of our core legal data solutions for law firms, one of the more exciting aspects of ILTACON for the UniCourt Team was the official release of an industry report we worked on for the last six months with Brad Blickstein and the NewLaw Practice Group at Baretz+Brunelle: “Marching Toward Data-Driven Business Development: Industry Insights from Am Law CMOs.”
You can download your free copy of the report with this link.
Throughout the month of August, UniCourt sponsored Ari Kaplan’s Virtual Lunch with a series on how law firms are #FuelingFirmGrowth by using legal data for business development and marketing. As a part of the Virtual Lunch Feedback Forum Ari hosts every Tuesday at noon EST, Ari stopped by UniCourt’s booth at ILTACON and conducted an excellent, live interview with Brad and Jeff with the Virtual Lunch club.
During the interview, they shared the five key findings from the report on how leading Am Law firms are leveraging data to win new business and gain a competitive advantage in the legal marketplace, as well as The Law Firm Business Development Data Maturity Model that UniCourt and Baretz+Brunelle developed from our combined research.
Want to learn more about the report and how law firms are using data for business development and marketing? Join Brad and Jeff on October 3, 2023 at 2:00 PM EST for a detailed discussion on the findings of the report and get industry insights from Nancy Kostakos, Chief Marketing Officer of Cooley LLP, and Amy T. Shepherd, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer of Ballard Spahr LLP.
Register here to join our webinar on Zoom.
ILTACON Legal Industry Perspectives
As the Director of Content for a leading enterprise legal technology company, and a newly appointed member of ILTA’s Corporate Content Coordinating Team, it may come as no surprise that one of my favorite things about ILTACON is the world-class educational content made available to all attendees.
Before getting into some of the top panel sessions from this year’s ILTACON, it’s first important to highlight the forward-thinking, intentional, and empathetic thoughtfulness the ILTA team put into the keynote speaker sessions.
Both the Monday morning keynote from Sara Ross, Chief Vitality Officer at BrainAMPED, on “Reignite a Sense of Aliveness,” and the Wednesday morning keynote from Dr. Rob Archer, Founder of The Career Psychologist, on “Build Resilience, Improve Mental Health and Sustain High Performance,” put mental health and wellness squarely at the forefront of the ILTACON agenda. Mental health and wellness are perennial issues the legal industry continues to struggle with, and it was refreshing to see the team at ILTA address it head on.
In recognition of the clear importance legal data plays in solving the challenges law firms have to address, directly after Sara Ross’ opening keynote on Monday morning, the first hour of educational sessions at ILTACON featured a panel discussion entirely on APIs:
API Solutions Showcase
- Jennifer Mendez, Senior Director of Knowledge Management Innovation, Fisher Phillips LLP
- Carrie Remhof, Senior Firm Intelligence Manager, Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP
- Vinitha Thankam, Senior Application Developer, Blizkin Simberg, LLP
- Mark Torchiana, CEO, Courtroom Insight, Inc.
- Nicholas Spampata, Principal Product Manager, Bloomberg Law
- Zorik Pesochinsky, Strategy, Thomson Reuters
As a fun aside, the post I made on Twitter about this panel session on how the legal industry and the legal tech community have come a long way since UniCourt started the push for leveraging APIs in 2018, has (at the point of publishing this blog) still received more views and engagement than even Bob Ambrogi’s great recap article about ILTACON, and remains a testament to just how top of mind APIs are for law firm leaders.
APIs are here to stay in legal. The most forward-thinking firms have already taken notice. They’re leading the pack forward, forging a path into the future, and using data-driven insights and intelligence to distance and differentiate themselves from the competition.
Here are some of our other favorite panels from the many thought-provoking educational sessions at ILTACON 2023.
Let’s Talk Legal Ops
- Brad Blickstein, Principal, Blickstein Group, Partner and Co-Head, Baretz+Brunelle NewLaw Practice Group
- Ron Warman, Partner, Affinity Consulting Group
- Sondra Rebenchuk, Senior Innovation Counsel, Blake, Cassels & Graydon, LLP
- Michele Compasso, Legal Operations, Corteva Inc
- Steve Viron, Managing Counsel, Crown Castle
- Donald Knight, Director of Legal and Tax Operations, Crown Castle
Why the Time is Now: A Central Repository for all Your Firm Data
- Tom Baldwin, CEO and Founder, Entegrata
- Stacy Rushing, Senior Knowledge Management and Data Analytics Counsel, Fisher Phillips LLP
- Paul Casey, Data Operations and Analytics Manager, Frost Brown Todd LLP
- Reanna Martinez, Solutions Manager, Munger, Tolles & Olsen LLP
Female Leadership in a Barbie World: The Challenge of Being Everything
- Karen Campbell, CIO, Foley Hoag LLP
- Yvonee Sexton, CIO, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP
- Andrea Markstrom, CIO, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
- Melanie Prevost, Director of Infrastructure and Technical Support, Vinson & Elkins LLP
- Jaimes Lee, Learning Development Specialist, Traveling Coaches, Inc.
Leveraging Data to Improve Market Position and Drive Revenue
- Kelly Harbor, Chief Business Development Officer, Goulston & Storrs, P.C.
- Jill Huse, Partner, Society 54, LLC
- Kevin Leahy, S. Director, Content & Brand Strategy, One North Interactive
The UniCourt Team at ILTACON
No recap blog on our takeaways and perspectives from a legal industry conference would be complete without some pictures of the UniCourt Team!
Beyond all of the fabulous content, meeting with our amazing clients, and the incredible interactions throughout this weeklong extravaganza that is ILTACON, the highlight would have to be getting the UniCourt Team together again, which was no small feat with team members coming from Colorado, California, Florida, Washington, and even Australia!
Here are some of our favorite pictures from ILTACON 2023.
Speak with UniCourt’s API Experts
Want to learn more about how the UniCourt Enterprise API solves key law firm challenges with real-time access to court data and legal analytics?
Contact us today to speak with one of our API experts and let’s chat about the problems your firm is facing and how UniCourt can help.