At the end of ILTACON 2023, I reached out to many of the people I met with for their observations about the conference and covered some of them yesterday. Here’s part two of ILTACON 2023 crowdsourced observations!

FYI, I’m publishing their crowdsourced ILTACON 2023 observations in the order they provided them to me and splitting them over three posts. Note: some of the responses are in two paragraphs, so look below if a paragraph doesn’t have a name attached to it.

It’s no surprise that generative AI was the talk of the conference. It was standing room only in a few of the AI sessions, which speaks volumes to how important this topic is to the industry right now. The use case possibilities seem to be endless, and many organizations announced their excitement around upcoming products and projects leveraging the technology. There was also an interesting point made that TAR is good, but TAR plus GPT could be even better, which we should look out for in the future. Cristin Traylor, Law Firm Marketing Strategy Director, Relativity

Ilta 2023 was high energy and filled with many familiar and even more new ones. While Legal Week was a flutter about Generative AI, this ILTA clearly showed that Legal Technology is All-in-on-GAI. From overheard demos to sessions to the marketing in the halls of the show, GAI was the bell of the Ilta ball. Cat Casey, Chief Growth Officer, Reveal

ILTACon 2023 was FULL of energy and the Swan and Dolphin facilitated a great forum for meetings to be conducted almost anywhere. This proved invaluable in an era where our eDiscovery domain witnesses constant evolution due to emerging data types, generative AI, the sprawling metaverse, and other transformative technologies altering our approach to investigations. Notably, the notion of introducing an XML format to enhance or supplant conventional .dat or .csv files emerged, heralding a fresh age of data standardization. Anticipation mounts as we track this development in the coming year. Rick Clark, VP of Strategic Partnerships, CloudNine

It was interesting to hear a lot of people talking about generative AI.  Although, I felt like a lot of what was said was speculative in that it was focused on what might be possible with gen AI, not what is tested and being used today.  The sessions on handling emerging data sources were very interesting, with problems discussed around short form messaging, access across custodians, single instance collection and version control. Collin Miller, Managing Director, FTI Consulting

ILTACON 2023 reinforced my conviction that transitioning to SaaS is not merely a trend, but a necessity for staying competitive and agile in today’s legal technology market. The discussions around collections that leverage a SaaS platform were particularly enlightening, highlighting the myriad of ways this approach can accelerate preservation and ease the pain of collection for technologists and custodians. Furthermore, the emphasis on education for emerging data sources is vital in enabling eDiscovery and investigative teams to standardize these sources in their workflows. I am inspired to lead our business with a renewed focus on these key areas, confident they will serve as the foundation for our continued success and growth. Ken Basore, General Manager, Cellebrite Enterprise Solutions

ILTACon was a major step forward not only for GenAI, but for fact analysis and trial tools like Opus, Everchron, Casemap, Trial Director and OnCue. With sessions devoted to trial presentation and Opus as a major sponsor of the event. Fact analysis is finding its place across the EDRM. Shannon Lex Bales, Automated Litigation Support Manager, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP

ILTACON 2023 was one of the best attended shows coming out of the pandemic yet. Generative AI, collaboration software, text messages and smartphones were among the eDiscovery hot topics discussed. The evening networking, seeing familiar colleagues, and hanging out with industry thought leaders was icing on the cake. Julie Lewis, President & CEO, Digital Mountain, Inc.

I was pleasantly surprised to not see ‘Generative AI’ plastered all over every booth and session title. Gen AI is undoubtedly still the topic at the top of everyone’s minds, but the conversations seem to have moved past the hype stage, to realistic exploration of how and why AI should be used in legal. I hope to see that trend continue going forward. Stephanie Wilkins, Editor-in-Chief, Legaltech^® News

The introduction of the Personal Development track and Affinity Groups was a game changer. In the 10+ years I have been involved and attended ILTACON, this is the first time I couldn’t be drawn away from my agenda. I do have to apologize to a few people I could not meet up with since I could not leave a keynote or session as it was too captivating. There was plenty of time in-between and after sessions to network. It was truly a magical time for me this year!! Candi Smith – ACEDS-CEDS

An extraordinary event!  I had the opportunity to facilitate an outstanding panel of experts in an information and data governance session.  Another highlight was serving as a buddy to 3 first time attendees (Kelly, Robin and Shannon 🙂 ).  If you’ve attended an ILTACon in the past, I highly recommend volunteering as a buddy at your next conference! Julie K. Brown, Director of Practice Technology, Vorys

In the spirit of ILTACON 2023, I’ve outsourced the next sentence to AI: “This annual conference brings together the brightest minds in legal technology, showcasing the latest advancements and groundbreaking ideas.” Believe it or not, I agree with the AI on this one. Working for an eDiscovery services company focused on “making legal human,” I found this year’s ILTACON to be refreshingly real – real legal professionals searching for real solutions. Brad Cope, Vice President of Marketing, Level Legal

The highlight of ILTACON for me was Corporate Legal Days, an energizing and innovative collaboration between CLOC and ILTA to bring the legal ops ecosystem together. The attendees – a fabulous mix of in-house legal leaders, cutting-edge tech and service providers and industry thought leaders – shared challenges and solutions in an intimate and completely no-sales environment.  It was utterly invigorating and the first of what we hope will be many more creative ways for the CLOC and ILTA communities to connect (including at the next CLOC Global Institute in May 2024 in Vegas).

Huge thanks to Joy Heath Rush, Christine Becker, Jack Thompson and the entire ILTA team for welcoming the CLOC in-house community with such open arms and hearts. Farrah Pepper, Chief Legal Innovation Counsel at Marsh McLennan & Vice President of CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium)

There were so many people who provided crowdsourced ILTACON 2023 observations that I couldn’t fit it all into one post! I’ll post the final set of comments I received on Friday! Thanks to all who crowdsourced ILTACON 2023 observations for me – you saved me writing three posts this week! 😀

So, what do you think? Did you attend ILTACON 2023? If so, feel free to comment with your own observations below! And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.