From Steve Fletcher of Parker, Poe, Adams & Bernstein:
Can Tech Shows Boost a Firm’s Bottom Line?
You can’t help but wonder about an Am Law 200 firm that significantly cut or eliminated IT and litigation support staff attendance at this year’s LegalTech and ILTA ’09 conferences. The reasons vary, from “it wouldn’t look right” to “we just have to cut expenses everywhere.”
Good thing these shows weren’t held in Las Vegas. No firm would have sent its IT folks there for a week of blackjack and “Texas Hold-’em” parties. Not a chance. It just wouldn’t send the right message, what with the layoffs, frozen salaries and the elimination of bonuses. But these shows weren’t in Vegas, and despite the beliefs of some (dare I say, many?), they aren’t paid vacations for the technology staff.
Last year, law firms sent 1,320 people to the ILTA conference in Dallas. Of those, 735 came from firms with more than 250 attorneys. A year later, at a site near Washington, D.C., that for millions is a train ride away, law firm attendance dropped 47 percent, to 704 full-conference attendees. Firms with more than 250 attorneys sent only 376 folks, a drop of nearly 50 percent. These numbers don’t include the attendees from corporate law departments, law schools or the government, with ILTA’s total attendance down 38 percent from the prior year. And ILTA wasn’t alone — almost all conferences in the legal arena suffered a drop in attendance due to the economy. LegalTech’s double-digit growth over the last few years was arrested this year. According to Henry Payne Dicker, vice president of ALM Events, attendance for the New York show was down slightly from previous years.
We don’t have data on what percentage of a firm’s technology budget was saved by not sending some of its IT staff to this conference, but with ILTA’s $1,025 fee (which included meals), and a deeply discounted hotel room, it couldn’t have been much. And there are firms (mine included) that will improve their bottom line by a lot more than what they spent on attendees of the ILTA ’09 conference — because they realize that surviving (and hopefully flourishing) in these economic times is as much about exploring new efficiencies as it is about cutting costs…
