Final Friday, Aug. 15, as I started to make my approach dwelling from ILTACON 2025, and eventually had sufficient of a break from the convention’s continuous, four-day flurry of exercise to inspect my social media, I took discover of the posts commemorating the 56th anniversary of Woodstock, which, because it occurs, started on Aug. 15, approach again in 1969.
One submit particularly jumped out at me. It featured a grainy photograph of Grace Slick on the microphone as Jefferson Airplane took the stage within the early morning hours, declaring to the group of practically half 1,000,000: “It’s a brand new daybreak.”
Her phrases had which means each literal and figurative. Torrential downpours had repeatedly delayed the band’s set, so by the point they launched into “White Rabbit,” the solar was certainly rising over Max Yasgur’s farm.
However Slick additionally gave the impression to be channeling the zeitgeist of a era – a era that sensed they had been witnessing the daybreak of a brand new period. Music, tradition, politics and, sure, even expertise, had been converging in ways in which would reshape society.
The rationale these phrases struck a chord with me on Friday was that that they had already been bouncing round in my mind in the course of the days earlier than, with out even having been fascinated with Grace Slick or Woodstock.
As I had walked the halls of the Gaylord Nationwide Harbor the place ILTACON befell, I had actually thought to myself, “We’re experiencing a brand new daybreak in authorized expertise.” I had felt, and I’m positive others felt, an electrical sense of being current on the daybreak of one thing transformative.
A Document-Setting ILTACON
This 12 months’s ILTACON was the most important ever, with roughly 4,600 folks from greater than 30 nations filling each nook of the Gaylord and spilling out into surrounding resorts, bars and eating places. However it wasn’t simply the dimensions that made it particular – it was the vitality. Having attended so many ILTACONs through the years that I’ve misplaced depend, I can confidently say this was probably the most vibrant and dynamic ILTA CON ever.
This 12 months’s convention had a pirate theme, as was mirrored within the opening remarks by convention cochairs Donna Frugoli and Brian Clarke.
In fact, the convention’s organizers deserve large credit score for this, notably cochairs Donna Frugoli, lead utility help analyst at Seyfarth Shaw, and and Brian Clark, cybersecurity supervisor at Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, in addition to everybody concerned in planning and executing this large convention. From the applications, to the social occasions, to the exhibit corridor, the convention was a cornucopia of helpful data and enriching networking.
However that sense I felt of a brand new daybreak was pushed by one thing larger – it was pushed by the zeitgeist, by the transformative second by which authorized tech at the moment finds itself. As somebody who has coated authorized tech for 30 years, I can not bear in mind there ever being a time resembling this, when the vitality and pleasure are raging, pushed by generative AI and a brand new period of innovation and new concepts of the attainable.
Let’s face it, for too lengthy, authorized tech conferences had fallen right into a predictable, if considerably bland, rhythm. 12 months after 12 months, the innovation appeared incremental, the breakthroughs evolutionary slightly than revolutionary. What number of other ways might we package deal contract lifecycle administration? What number of variations on e-discovery platforms might the market bear? The authorized tech trade appeared to have settled into a snug however uninspiring groove.
However this 12 months was totally different. Wandering the exhibit corridor, getting product briefings from distributors, speaking with attendees, it was unattainable to disregard the elemental shift taking place in authorized expertise. Gen AI isn’t simply creating new merchandise – it’s spawning fully new classes of merchandise that actually are reshaping how authorized work will get achieved.
AI Drives A New Period
The place as soon as we noticed new merchandise that supplied incremental (and siloed) enhancements to how authorized professionals work, we now see AI brokers that may carry out complicated, multi-step duties with unprecedented sophistication. AI expertise isn’t just automating duties, it’s streamlining full workflows and really augmenting authorized work.
Agentic AI is the buzzword of 2025 and agentic techniques had been in all places at ILTACON, promising to streamline workflows throughout all areas of authorized follow. However, maybe extra importantly, these instruments are additionally starting to deal with the enterprise facet of working a regulation follow – from shopper consumption and billing to advertising and follow administration. The scope of transformation is now starting to increase past the follow of regulation into the enterprise of regulation.
There was quite a bit to be seen within the exhibit corridor, the place there have been 233 vendor cubicles and 27 startups within the Startup Hub.
Throughout my time on the convention, I witnessed a variety of product demos – from corporations starting from main established distributors to fledgling startups – and lots of of them weren’t simply spectacular, however doubtlessly paradigm-shifting.
I’ve already written about among the ILTACON-timed releases from the most important gamers, together with Thomson Reuters’ launch of CoCounsel Legal with agentic AI and deep analysis, the launch of Protégé General AI by LexisNexis Authorized & Skilled, and NetDocuments’ launch of AI-powered document profiling and an agentic AI device for enhancing paperwork immediately inside Microsoft Phrase.
However maybe much more inspiring was to wander via ILTACON’s Startup Hub and see the businesses which might be germinating new concepts for the way forward for authorized tech. I used to be comfortable to see some corporations there that had beforehand participated within the Startup Alley I host at ABA Techshow, together with this 12 months’s winner, Querious, which is a product not like something I’ve ever seen earlier than, offering attorneys with “conversational intelligence” throughout on-line conferences with purchasers. I urge you to take a look at all the businesses that had been on this 12 months’s Startup Hub.
To stretch this entire Woodstock analogy only a bit additional, simply because the historically powerful sound systems at Woodstock allowed music to achieve practically half 1,000,000 folks, gen AI has the facility – or at the least the potential – to amplify authorized experience in methods we’re solely starting to know and to democratize entry to authorized data and evaluation.
The Daybreak’s Limitation
However right here’s the place the analogy will get sophisticated, and the place my enthusiasm will get tempered by actuality. Woodstock, for all its idealistic messaging about peace, love and social change, was nonetheless primarily accessible to these privileged sufficient to attend. They had been principally white, middle-class younger individuals who might afford to take time away and journey to a farm in upstate New York.
Equally, the “new daybreak” I witnessed at ILTACON is going on largely throughout the elite circles of authorized expertise. The 4,600 attendees had been predominantly from massive regulation corporations, main companies, and established authorized tech corporations.
One of many many events that befell throughout ILTACON.
Largely lacking from this gathering had been solo practitioners, small agency attorneys, authorized help organizations, and access-to-justice advocates – the very individuals who stand to learn most from the democratizing potential of AI.
(I’ve written about this difficulty earlier than: tech-a-tale-of-two-conferences-and-the-implications-for-a2j.html”>The Justice Hole in Authorized tech: A Story of Two Conferences and the Implications for A2J.)
In equity, that’s the nature of ILTACON and displays the composition of ILTA’s membership and supporting sponsors. It’s now and has at all times been a corporation targeted on bigger regulation corporations.
Nevertheless, now greater than ever, the improvements we’re seeing in authorized tech have the facility to stage the enjoying subject, to offer smaller practitioners entry to instruments and capabilities that had been as soon as prohibitively costly. If these applied sciences stay priced for and marketed primarily to Huge Regulation, we could have succeeded solely in widening the justice hole slightly than closing it.
Extending the Daybreak
Grace Slick’s declaration of a “new daybreak” at Woodstock grew to become a rallying cry for a era that believed music and tradition might create optimistic social change. The authorized tech neighborhood now faces an analogous second of chance and duty.
The AI revolution in authorized expertise represents extra than simply one other enterprise alternative – it’s a probability to meet expertise’s long-promised potential to make authorized providers extra accessible and inexpensive. However it will solely occur if we – as an trade and as a neighborhood – dedicate ourselves to making sure that these improvements attain past the authorized elites.
Within the media room, authorized tech reporters and analysts gathered for a first-day briefing.
This implies growing pricing fashions that work for solo practitioners and small corporations. It means creating instruments that handle the precise wants of authorized help organizations and public defenders. It means constructing AI techniques that may assist bridge the access-to-justice hole slightly than widen it.
The distributors, traders and authorized professionals who gathered at Nationwide Harbor have the experience, sources, and market place to drive this transformation. However it should require intentional effort to increase this new daybreak past the snug confines of huge regulation corporations and main companies.
A Name to Motion
In order I discovered myself Friday reflecting on each Woodstock and ILTACON, I considered how moments resembling this provide distinctive alternatives for optimistic change. Woodstock’s legacy was not simply the music – it was its lasting affect on social actions and cultural attitudes that prolonged far past that August weekend.
The authorized tech neighborhood has an analogous alternative. The AI-driven new daybreak that was evident at ILTACON can both stay confined to the elite authorized market, or it might turn into the catalyst for elementary enhancements in how society accesses justice.
Grace Slick was proper – it’s a new daybreak. The query is whether or not we are going to make sure that this daybreak rises for everybody, or simply for the lucky few who occurred to be in attendance when the music began enjoying. The selection is ours.
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