ILTACON 2026 is in full swing! Two days of sessions in the books! Here are Wednesday happenings at ILTACON 2026!

As I discussed here and here, the International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) annual conference ILTACON 2026 is being conducted this week at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, TN. Each day at ILTACON 2026, eDiscovery Today will highlight notable sessions for the day – in most cases, those sessions will relate to eDiscovery, Information Governance, cybersecurity, data privacy, or artificial intelligence (as well as a few other happenings during the week).

Also, several eDiscovery Today partners are exhibiting at ILTACON this week. Here they are with their booth numbers: Syllo-747, Epiq-430, Everlaw-331 and KLDiscovery-213 and Relativity-210. Please check them out!

Here are Wednesday happenings at ILTACON 2026!

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM CDT:

Kevin Fong Keynote with 911 Memorial (Delta Ballroom A)

Dr. Kevin Fong OBE is an award-winning doctor, broadcaster, and former NASA physician whose career bridges space exploration and frontline emergency medicine. Combining expertise in astrophysics, medicine, and engineering, he inspires global audiences through his BBC work, hit podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, and acclaimed book Extremes.

Speaker: Dr. Kevin Fong.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM CDT:

Rise of the Legal Data Scientist (Part I) (Tennessee AB)

Legal work now depends on navigating enormous volumes of information, and many businesses serving legal organizations and corporate law departments are creating new roles to bridge analytics and technology. This session explores the growing profession of the legal data scientist, what skills matter, how the role fits within a law firm, and how it supports litigation, investigations, pricing, and knowledge management. Speakers will discuss practical capabilities such as working with structured and unstructured data, building repeatable analysis workflows, understanding cloud environments, and collaborating with litigation support and eDiscovery teams. The session will also cover emerging career paths, team structures, and examples of how firms are using data specialists to improve decision-making and deliver better client outcomes.

Attendees will gain a clear view of how this role is evolving and what it can bring to their organizations.

Speakers: Aron Ahmadia, Relativity ODA LLC; Josh Blandi, CEO, UniCourt Inc.; Iman Badri, Data Scientist, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls: Project Leadership for Legal Tech (Volunteer Ballroom South)

Legal tech projects rarely move in straight lines. You’re expected to move fast, stay flexible, and keep everything under control—at the same time. This session dives into practical ways to lead complex initiatives through uncertainty, influence stakeholders without authority, balance agile ways of working with needed oversight, and define success by real adoption and business impact, not just go-live.

SESSION TOPICS

1. Developing project plans for tech rollouts.

2. Managing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA)

3. Engage stakeholders and manage change.

4. Expand success criteria to include user satisfaction, adoption rates, and benefits realization

5. Track success metrics and lessons learned.

PARTICIPANTS TAKEAWAYS/LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. A practical framework for planning and delivering legal tech projects

2. Expanded success metrics that matter to the business

3. Understand strategies for influencing cross-functional teams without formal authority

4. Methods to engage stakeholders and manage change throughout the project lifecycle

Speakers: Rami Romero, Director, Change, Strategy and Enablement, Harbor Global LLC; Marjan van Ham, Managing Director, L-IME; Michael Walls, Practice Leader & Sr. Project Manager, Kraft Kennedy; Holly Gore, Manager of Project and Change Management, Jackson Lewis; Brenda Louise Ivey, Senior Principal Analyst, iManage.

Beyond the Charter: AI Governance Frameworks That Actually Work (Davidson North)

Move past theoretical frameworks to discover what’s working in real law firms today. This session examines practical AI governance implementations across real-world organizations serving legal professionals today featuring case studies of ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, and EU AI Act compliance programs. Learn how to bridge the gap between executive vision and operational reality, including risk categorization that doesn’t stall innovation, guardrails that keep firm data protected, and tactics to vet new AI opportunities before ungoverned adoption takes hold.

Speakers: Jon Washburn, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Stoel Rives LLP; Brannon Millard, eMerge Director of Cybersecurity, AI Governance & Risk, Troutman Pepper Locke LLP; Jason Maust, Information Governance Manager, McGuireWoods LLP.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CDT:

Data Science as a Core Capability for the Modern Legal Team (Tennessee AB)

This session is structured as an expert conversation that opens with why data science is now a core legal capability, moves through stakeholder education and decision-making, then closes with the competitive advantage created by a mature legal data science program.

• Why legal teams need internal capability to understand and evaluate rapidly changing technologies. 
• Why firms can no longer rely solely on vendors or external experts. 
• Why data science must become an organizational competency rather than a niche skill. 
• How the opening sets expectations for the rest of the discussion.

Speakers: Igor Labutov, Chief AI Officer, Legal Solutions, Epiq; James Ding, CEO, Draftwise; Alexis Mitchell, AI Senior Consultant, Syllo.

Beyond the Project Management Playbook: Delivering Legal AI When the Rules Keep Changing (Volunteer Ballroom South)

Traditional project management approaches weren’t built for AI’s unique challenges. While methodologies like Agile embrace iteration, AI initiatives introduce a deeper level of uncertainty: evolving requirements, shifting success criteria, variable outputs, and use cases that often emerge during implementation rather than before it. Stakeholder expectations can also shift rapidly once teams begin to see what the technology can actually do. In legal environments, adoption and sustained use quickly become just as critical as delivery itself.

This session is designed for anyone leading AI project work in a legal setting, including project managers, innovation and KM professionals, legal ops, IT, and attorneys building new workflows. Together, we’ll explore why AI changes not just project delivery, but change management itself — and how teams can adapt without overengineering.

Based on lessons learned from active AI initiatives, we’ll introduce practical approaches for navigating AI work in environments where requirements, priorities, and use cases can continue evolving throughout delivery. We’ll also discuss how firms are moving from AI experimentation and pilots into broader operational adoption.

Attendees will leave with practical insights and tools they can apply immediately, including:

• A shared expectations and guardrails framework (project charter reimagined) 
• A data and workflow readiness checklist 
• Governance practices designed for iteration and performance drift 
• Communication strategies for discussing AI uncertainty with leadership

Speakers: Cindy Etoh, Director of Project Services, Ropes & Gray; Alice Ahmad, Senior Manager, Legal Solutions, Miller Thomson LLP; Maddie Pipitone, Legal AI Prompt Specialist, Thomson Reuters.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM CDT:

eDiscovery Beyond the Inbox (Tennessee AB)

Short-form messaging has taken over the workplace, and it is creating a whole new layer of complexity for eDiscovery teams. WhatsApp voice notes, disappearing messages, Slack huddles, Instagram DMs, Teams Clips, and other app-based communications now show up in matters with almost no warning and the formats are rarely straightforward. This session focuses on the practical challenges: how to collect from applications that were not built with discovery in mind, how to organize mixed media threads that combine text, emojis, edits, reactions, and voice notes, and how to make these data types reviewable without overwhelming your team. We will also look at authentication issues, gaps in exports, and the traps that come with mobile-to-cloud messaging.

Attendees will walk away with workable strategies, lessons learned from recent matters, and a clear view of what “good” looks like when messaging evidence becomes the center of the case.

Speakers: Julia Helmer, Director, Client Solutions, Array; Amy Hough, Senior Practice Attorney, Ashurst Perkins Coie; Matthew Rasmussen, Founder, ModeOne.

Here’s a link to the detailed agenda for the week. One more day!

So, what do you think? Are you checking out the Wednesday happenings at ILTACON 2026? If you’re here in person, look me up!  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.