Legalweek Has Left the Building – and Successfully Landed In A New One

Last week, Law.com Legalweek pulled off something genuinely impressive: It moved.

After 39 years at the New York Hilton Midtown, one of the world’s leading legal technology conferences relocated to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a sprawling glass and steel pavilion 1.6 miles away on Manhattan’s far west side, steps from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and — setting aside the not-so-trivial issue of its less-than-convenient location — the transition was, by most measures, a success.

That it felt strange and disorienting at first, at least to veterans, was entirely expected. The location, far removed from the hotels, restaurants and bars that had made midtown so convenient, presented real challenges.

But what was not expected was how quickly attendees acclimated to the new space. While the Javits is a much-different space than the Hilton, its advantages compensated for what was lost in leaving the Hilton – and while kinks remain, they are largely fixable.

A Brief History of Legalweek

To understand why the move was such a big deal — and, no doubt, a difficult decision for ALM, the company that produces Legalweek — the conference’s history provides some context.

Although the full history is a bit murky, according to my research (some of which I detailed in this prior post), the conference, originally called Legal Tech, started in 1982. It was founded and originally produced by Janet Felleman, in partnership with Price Waterhouse, to help attorneys learn how to use and manage technology in the law office.

She ran it until 2001, when it was taken over by the National Law Publishing Company, which was publisher of the The National Law Journal and The New York Law Journal. In 1997, American Lawyer Media — the predecessor to today’s ALM — acquired that company, and with it, the conference, whose name had by then evolved to the space-omitting LegalTech.

The original home to the conference was the Sheraton New York, just a block away from the Hilton. As best as I can tell, it remained at the Sheraton for its first four years, moving to the Hilton in 1986.

On the Internet Archive, I even managed to find a review of the 1985 conference, written by Norvell E. Brasch, a Colorado attorney, for PC Magazine. Of the conference, he wrote:

“The first Legal Tech for 1985. held at the Sheraton Centre in New York City from January 28-30, offered lectures on managing and operating computer technology along with hands-on sessions that taught some basic microcomputer applications for the law office. Prepared with the right questions and a fundamental understanding of the management problems and possible solutions, even a computer novice could glean the right information from the exhibitors. For a law firm looking to purchase or update its word processing or time and billing systems. sending a delegate to a Legal Tech conference is a wise investment.”

(In fact, for some years in the 1990s, there were LegalTech events in multiple cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.)

In 2017, ALM rebranded the conference from Legaltech to Legalweek, aiming to broaden its scope to include programming targeted at CIOs, legal marketers, legal business professionals, and others. (It even experimented with a small-firm track.) As I wrote at the time, the conference’s reinvention as Legalweek made sense, as Legaltech had been crying for a shake-up, having become dominated by e-discovery, to the virtual exclusion of all else.

The Move to the Javits

But it continued on in the Hilton, where attendees would routinely, year after year, gripe and groan about the facilities. The exhibit hall was too cramped and dark, they would say, not to mention spread confusingly over multiple floors and spaces. There is nowhere to sit and have conversations, they would complain. The Hilton’s hotel rooms were cramped and overpriced.

But as the conference continued to grow and as the Hilton threatened to dramatically raise its prices, Legalweek needed to find a new home, one with space to expand and where the conference’s producers could have more control over its sales and pricing of exhibit and meeting spaces.

The irony, of course, is that, upon arriving this year at the Javits, many of those veteran attendees – the ones who had griped and groaned about the Hilton – suddenly found themselves with a bad case of nostalgia.

Maybe the Hilton was not so bad, after all?

Location, Location, Location

Let’s face it. Javits has its issues. The biggest is its location. Way off on 11^th Avenue on the west side, steps from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, it lacks the Hilton’s midtown proximity to a host of hotels, bars, restaurants and more.

Hotels were a particular problem. Whereas many Legalweek attendees previously booked their stays directly in the Hilton or in one of the hotels adjacent to it, this year’s attendees were scrambling for rooms all over the city, with most of them, it seemed, landing in one of the Times Square-area spots.

That meant that, for most attendees, just getting from their hotel to the conference was a good 10 to 15-minute walk. People’s step counters were routinely clocking 15,000 or more a day.

Fortunately for them, this had to have been the record-best weather ever for this conference, which had traditionally been in January or February, with temperatures last week in the 60s and 70s most of the time.

Besides the lack of nearby hotels, the location also made it difficult for vendors or others to set up suites or host off-site meetings. At the Hilton, vendors would often reserve high-end suites to meet with customers and prospects, either directly in the Hilton or at one of the close-by hotels.

At Javits, finding such spaces was difficult. Some vendors had events in the nearby Hudson Yards complex, but getting there was another 10-minute or more walk. Given that many Legalweek attendees tightly schedule their time and meetings, that extra 10 minutes each way could play havoc with someone’s schedule.

In lieu of suites, many vendors reserved meeting “rooms” in a fifth-floor area of the Javits, only to find out that they consisted of nothing more than a big room subdivided by curtained-off meeting areas. That meant not only that the rooms could be noisy at times, but, more importantly, that they lacked the privacy to conduct the business that sometimes takes place in such spaces.

No ‘Center of Gravity’

On a practical note, another downside to the location was the lack of food. While Legalweek served a boxed lunch in the exhibit hall each day, that was about it for food options. A small cart located within Javits had coffee and a few other items, but all way over-priced. For any other food, the best option was to trudge over to Hudson Yards.

But for me, the greatest downside to the location was that it lacked a “center of gravity.” I have always maintained that the strongest reason to attend a conference of this sort is not the programs or the exhibitors, but the people. In this age of Zoom calls and working from home, there is no substitute for getting out to a major conference where you can meet face-to-face with old friends and make new ones.

Say what you will about the Hilton, but at least it had a center of gravity, and that was its lobby and lobby bar. It was a place of serendipity, where you would run into people you did not even know you were looking for. And at the end of the day, after whatever dinners or receptions you’d attended, you knew you could stop there and find friends.

With the conference now at the Javits, there is no such place. There is not even a nearby hotel that could serve as the default. I jokingly told one ALM executive that, next year, the company should designate an “official bar.” Granted, the lawyers in the room might see some liability issues in that suggestion, but surely ChatGPT can figure out a way around those issues.

A Well-Executed Transition

By now in reading this post, you might be wanting to ask, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” But the fact is, the play was pretty darn good.

Setting aside the inconvenience of the location of the Javits, the substance of what took place inside its light-filled halls was fully in keeping with the track record of what has made this conference a 44-year success and a must-attend annual pilgrimage for many in the worlds of legal tech and legal practice.

The headline of all this is how seamlessly Legalweek’s organizers managed the move. Given the task of taking a major conference that had been in the same location for some four decades and moving it to a very different type of location, it went off virtually without a hitch. Purely from logistical and organizational standpoint, the Legalweek organizers deserve props.

The most-dramatic improvement was in the exhibit hall itself. With high ceilings, plenty of light, and plenty of space, it was highly conducive to wandering and exploring and checking out the various booths. Of the exhibitors I spoke to, virtually all agreed it was a better space for them and for the attendees.

Word has it that Legalweek has already reserved even more space for next year to accommodate vendors it had to turn away this year.

In the world of legal tech conferences, we have seen major moves such as this not go so smoothly.

Compare this move to ABA Techshow’s move last year from Chicago’s Hyatt Regency to the McCormick Convention Center. As I wrote then, although the move did not negatively impact the programming, conference organizers made poor use of the space, resulting in attendees “navigating a waste land” of empty space.

Another example of “venue shock” was when Clio moved its conference in 2022 to the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, which I described as “a sprawling, byzantine facility that appears to have been designed by a team inspired by the drawings of graphic artist MC Escher.”

By contrast, Legalweek’s organizers made good use of the new space within the Javits, planning the layout well, with the exhibit hall directly adjacent to the registration area on one floor, and a good flow through seminar rooms and meeting spaces on higher floors.

Still Some Rough Edges

But a well-executed move is not the same as a perfect one, and there are still rough edges that bear mentioning.

To the chagrin of Hilton veterans, one of the most irksome was the seating, or lack thereof. Although the overall space within the Javits seemed cavernous, somehow there were never enough places to sit and have meetings or conversations. The handful of spaces with tables and chairs were always full, and what few other options existed were also always full.

For those of us in the media, we were initially glad to learn there would be a media room for us to work, record podcasts, and hold meetings. Unfortunately, it was nothing more than a cordoned-off space with too few tables and seats. Other than early or late in the day, I rarely could find space there even to just sit by myself and work.

But just as Clio was able to work out many of the kinks with the Opryland by its second year there, we can expect Legalweek to do the same. (We do not know yet about ABA Techshow’s second year in the McCormick, as that happens next week.)

Keynotes and Panels

Because of my tight meeting schedule, I did not attend a single one of the more than 100 panels or two keynotes. As is becoming an annoying routine at legal tech conferences, the keynote speakers were celebrities who knew nothing about law or tech – in this case former NFL  quarterback Eli Manning and Mindy Kaling, the actress, producer, screenwriter and comedian.

By all accounts, they were both entertaining, and each had enthusiastic fans who were thrilled at the opportunity to see them live.

Of the panels, the one I heard the most people talk about was the annual judicial panel, which this year sounded the alarm on the significant threats we face in our nation to the rule of law. My friend Stephen Embry has a thorough report on this panel over at Above the Law.

A New Dominant Tech

There is some irony in the fact that, as I noted above, the conference formerly known as Legaltech rebranded as Legalweek in an attempt to shake off its dominance by e-discovery technology.

Because now, of course, as Legalweek has again made a big move, it is again dominated by a specific technology, only this time it is AI.

One did not even have to step foot inside the Javits to be assaulted by marketing for AI products such as Harvey and Legora and CoCounsel. Legora, one of the principal competitors in the legal AI space, chose this week – its first anniversary of doing business in the United States – to announce a $550 million Series D funding round.

Within the exhibit hall, there was hardly a booth that did not tout some AI-related product or feature. But that, of course, was to be expected – and, in fact, is the reason the conference drew so many attendees, eager and curious to learn all they could about this still-emerging technology.

There will come a time when AI will no longer be the spotlight technology of Legalweek, just as e-discovery no longer is or contract-lifecycle management no longer is.

It is not that AI will disappear, but rather that it will become table stakes – so embedded and routine in legal tech that we will no longer think about it, just like we no longer think about the cloud as a “thing.”

Clients At the Forefront

Over all these years and iterations of Legalweek, there has, perhaps, been one important change in its focus – and it is a change that AI is helping to drive.

In that 1985 review by lawyer Norvell Brasch, he criticized the conference’s lack of focus on how technology could help not just lawyers, but also their clients.

“As I see it, the prospect of using computers in the substantive practice of law rather than just in the administration of the law office is the most exciting new trend in technology for lawyers,” Brasch presciently wrote. “In other words, can a computer help solve the legal problems of my clients, in addition to making the documents I prepare for them neater and the bill I send them more accurate?”

Unfortunately, he concluded back then, the Legal Tech conference was sorely lacking in that regard. “The New York conference concentrated on computers as a management tool to the exclusion of some of the analytical uses of computers. … In the focus on the ‘back office’ functions, the more primary tasks of a lawyer were largely neglected.”

Forty-one years later, there is still plenty of emphasis on the back office, as well there should be, because that is a critical aspect of running a law practice.

But solving the legal problems of clients – the substantive practice of law – is now very much at the forefront of legal tech development, and therefore of this conference.

After all, the promise of generative AI is that it will enable legal professionals to serve their clients more effectively and at lower cost. And it is that promise that will no doubt draw even more attendees to the Javits Center for next year’s Legalweek.