At the end of ILTACON 2026, I reached out to many of the people I met with for their observations about the conference and covered some of them Tuesday and yesterday. Here’s part three of ILTACON 2026 crowdsourced observations!

FYI, I’m publishing their crowdsourced ILTACON 2026 observations in the order they provided them to me and splitting them over three posts.

Both the panel I moderated and the session I spoke on at ILTACON focused on AI defensibility, and the packed rooms made it clear this is where the industry’s attention has shifted. Firms don’t just want AI that works, they want AI they can explain and stand behind if a client or court ever asks how a result was reached. Cristin K. Traylor, Head of Legal AI Consulting, Relativity

One thing that stood out at ILTACON was a clear shift from AI hype toward AI scrutiny. The conversation is increasingly about measurable ROI, cost, reliability, and where today’s AI reaches its limits. Clients are also asking the harder questions: What truly differentiates one legal AI platform from another? And what is its ROI? Igor Labutov, Chief AI Officer, Legal Solutions, Epiq

ILTACON 2026 was one of the most vibrant conferences I’ve attended. The competition among vendors in the AI space is fierce, and driving a huge amount of energy and investment. That was evident in the giant booths and vast sums spent on entertainment, which generated plenty of conversation around whether, or perhaps when, the bubble will burst. More substantively, the level of advancement in the technology on display is impressive. AI is no longer an afterthought or add on and the word of the conference – perhaps the year – was context. Using AI as an assistant is a more real prospect as a result. Well done to the ILTA organisers. They themselves are not immune from competition and the energy within the organisation is palpable. Caroline Hill, Editor, Legal IT Insider

Nashville is a great home for ILTACON, and I’m glad it’s returning in 2027. Great energy and a great place to carry conversations from the conference floor to Broadway. It’s the one conference where I get to take a deep dive into how law firms, large, medium, and small, are approaching AI development and solutions. Tom Palladino, President, eDiscovery AI

The keynote from Jim Abbott was a memorable moment, not just for the tears and emotions he stirred up in the room. My husband’s a Yankees fan, so that one hit close to home. And let’s talk about that exhibit floor: it wasn’t packed wall to wall every hour, but when you looked at what companies built out there, the scale of some of those booths was outrageous…frankly, CES-caliber. That definitely tells you where this industry is putting its money. I’ve attended every ILTACON, and combined with Nashville’s spirit, which no other host city comes close to, this one stuck with me. I’m already planning for next year, especially knowing we get to do this all again in Nashville. Maribel Rivera, VP of Strategy and Client Engagement, ACEDS

I finally saw the impact of all of the money that is being invested into AI. Those booths were ridiculous. Great energy. Lots of fun and creative people and ideas. Nashville is more fun every time I go there. Such a great place for a conference, and the Gaylord certainly helped me get my steps in. Jim Sullivan, Founder and CEO at eDiscovery AI

ILTACON 2026 felt like the year legal AI stopped being a feature and started becoming infrastructure. The conversation has moved from ‘What can this model do?’ to ‘How do we connect it to trusted data, validate it, govern it, and make it part of real legal work?’ That shift from experimentation to architecture may be the most important story coming out of this year’s conference. Kevin M. Clark, Chief Executive Officer, Right Discovery

This year at ILTACON, we reached peak platform hype in legal tech with more vendors entering an ‘all-things-to-everyone’ arms race and showcasing platforms claiming they can handle every link in the legal value chain. But the reality on the ground is that a platform that claims it can do everything usually does nothing exceptionally well. While the breadth of new capabilities is impressive, the industry’s initial AI curiosity has matured into a focus on multi-step agentic workflows and deeply integrated solutions that can tackle complex legal challenges and demonstrate measurable impact. Moving forward, the advantage belongs to legal organizations who reject the hype and demand proof over promises. Richard Crum, Chief Product, Technology and Strategy Officer, DISCO

Congratulations to the ILTA organizers for such a great event – the exhibit hall floor was full of energy from start to finish! I had many great conversations with clients and other legal tech innovators; the reception to our unified litigation solution and advancements in Auto review was remarkably strong. It is clearer than ever that we’re in the midst of a truly transformative time for legal tech and the world of litigation will be remarkably different in the years to come as clients look for purpose-built platforms. Kristin Zmrhal, Vice President, Product Strategy, DISCO

The most impactful takeaway from ILTACON 2026 wasn’t a product launch or a panel discussion,  for me, it was the 9/11 Memorial tribute, a genuinely emotional moment honoring those directly and indirectly affected. While AI continued to dominate the conversation on stage, in breakout sessions and in booths, the conversations our team had on the ground told a different story. Firms are still struggling with the fundamentals. Data volumes keep growing, matter mobility keeps increasing, lateral hires keep moving between firms, and the demand for faster, more robust security keeps rising. The result is a widening gap of firms trying to keep up. The operational work required to keep pace is taking longer than ever and still often done via manual processes. Frank Perrone, Founder & CEO, ReVia

Practitioners are moving beyond questions of AI’s capabilities to questions about how these solutions are deployed at scale.  Litigation teams are beginning to focus on adoption, training, and validating results.

“Transformative” was everywhere. Buyers have stopped listening to that word. They are not interested in more software that introduces new workflows to manage. They want to hear about concrete results and AI solutions that produce meaningful work product from the start. It’s exciting to be part of an industry working its way to result-focused products.

The data backs up what we heard all week. Independent surveys put daily use of generative AI among in-house lawyers at 23%, and trust in the output lower still. Litigation teams are demanding reliable solutions that ground their work product in the litigation record.

Law firms are grappling with how to incorporate AI tools into their pricing models.  As clients demand value-centered pricing, firms are taking a closer look at the quality of the results generated and how predictably the tools impact costs.  High quality work product and predictable cost are prerequisites to firms’ being able to translate adoption of AI into the alternative fee arrangements clients are increasingly demanding. Katie Barr, EVP Go to Market, Syllo

At ILTACON I heard a lot about Legal AI fog.  The old question – whether firms should adopt Legal AI tools –  has been asked and answered.  The conversation at ILTACON was inspiring precisely because it moved past that and centered around the industry’s real challenge, how to see through the fog.  The volume and variability of legal AI tools has law firms facing increasingly high stakes tech procurement decisions with uncertainty.  I learned a lot engaging with industry leaders seeking clarity through the fog and look forward to continuing the conversation.

The command-of-the-record problem remains a significant impediment to implementing real change.  Firms facing manual context management, data movement, and sometimes inconsistent AI output quality continue to struggle with Legal AI adoption.  At ILTACON, litigators’ needs crystallized – to provide clients with strategic advantages, they need a unified platform, a single space where they can work through the entire lifecycle of litigation, without having to move or maintain data.

Every CIO conversation came back to business models.  How can AI investments give firms greater flexibility to offer fixed fee pricing or other AFA models to their clients?  The number of point tools in their stacks is an impediment for many firms.  A view I heard repeatedly was that the stakes of tech procurement decisions – and being able to see through the LegalAI fog – had never been higher. Theo Rostow, COO/CSO, Syllo

Last, but not least…

While the Gaylord Opryland was an enormous venue, I found the size to be highly beneficial for the exhibit hall. The physical setup was designed with wide-open spaces and broader aisles which made the spacious hall highly comfortable to navigate, and larger booths meant more staff which meant I could walk right up and start a conversation without waiting or, worse, standing behind a crowd to hear someone give a demo. 

Two thumbs up for the exhibit hall. Except for The Wall.

But I don’t go to the exhibit hall for education. I go for the Goo Goo clusters and the free espresso. And this year, the education was tremendous. And let’s face it, this is the strength of ILTACON. Best educational sessions in our space IMO.

Unlike previous years where vendors pushed generic “AI is good” messaging, this year’s technical focus shifted to pragmatic back-office utility as AI implementation is expanding from eDiscovery to comprehensive, firm-wide information retrieval and management. As Chuck Keller of Everlaw said to me, “…  no big firm knows how much work it has or where it all goes even with a highly centralized command of eDiscovery”.

So by all means, come to ILTACON27 next year for the exhibit hall glitz and giveaways. But stay for the education.  You’ll be glad you did. Tom O’Connor, Director, Gulf Coast Legal Tech Center

There were so many people who provided crowdsourced ILTACON 2026 observations that I couldn’t fit it all into one post! Thanks to all who crowdsourced ILTACON 2026 observations for me – you saved me writing three posts this week! 😀

So, what do you think? Did you attend ILTACON 2026? 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.