ILTACON 2024: Selling legal tech's monorail
Nicole Black.
Last week’s ILTACON, an annual conference sponsored by the International Legal Technology Association felt a lot like The Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail,” where the smooth-talking Lyle Lanley sells the town on the idea of a flashy but questionable monorail. Lanley’s famous opening line, “You know, a town with money’s a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it,” kept coming to mind during the event’s numerous presentations.
Just like the monorail pitch, this year’s ILTACON was filled with ambitious promises around generative AI, but vendors often lacked concrete evidence to back them up.
To be clear, this isn’t about assigning blame. Our industry stands at a crossroads. Generative AI burst onto the scene with great promise last year, leading to quick, surface-level adaptations, but the deeper, more meaningful implementations that legal professionals need have been slower to materialize and will necessarily take time to develop. For now, most legal tech companies rely on selling visions of the future, often through tightly controlled, prerecorded demos of products still in early development or beta release.
Despite the AI hype, this year’s conference, which took place in Nashville, Tennessee, was a memorable one. The conversations and meetings I participated in were infused with optimism about the future of legal tech, and they left me reflecting on a few common themes that emerged.
Excitement is in the air
This year’s conference was an event not to be missed. With over 4,000 registrants, it was the most well-attended ILTACON ever, according to ILTA. Attendees and exhibitors alike agreed that the possibilities of legal tech infused with generative AI were endless, and there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm for the next stage of legal generative AI tools. No matter who I talked to, there was agreement that AI has the potential to change the game by reducing the tedium of practicing law and allowing legal professionals to do what they do best: solve their clients’ problems.
This topic came up when I met with Paul Walker, global solutions director, and Jack Shepherd, head of knowledge consulting, from iManage to discuss their news of the rollout of new AI-powered services that extend the capabilities of the iManage knowledge work platform. Part of our conversation revolved around the idea that AI’s superpower is that it offloads tedious tasks—whether by using iManage’s AI-powered email classification or the ‘Ask iManage’ natural language document assistant—allowing legal professionals to focus on the high-level work that truly matters.
Generative AI is the new interface
Another recurring theme at the conference was the idea that generative AI is poised to become the new interface for legal software. Many attendees suggested that these AI-driven interfaces would soon enable legal professionals to more easily access law firm data and utilize features within trusted legal platforms. The thesis was that once generative AI is integrated into existing law firm technology stacks, it will provide an intuitive interface, making legal software more accessible to all users.
For example, when I met with NetDocuments’ Dan Hauck, chief product officer, and John Motz, chief technology officer, they shared news of ndMAX Assist, an intelligent agent released in beta that allows NetDocuments Pattern Builder MAX customers to interact with their documents using natural language, whether in NetDocuments or Microsoft CoPilot. In reference to the new generative AI features, Hauck explained that while legal professionals want a “familiar, easy chatbot experience,” there were compelling reasons for his company to want to contain it and make it secure, such as ensuring accurate output and compliance with ethical obligations, while providing “a holistic experience whether you’re in CoPilot or NetDocuments.”
Competition is fierce
As the generative AI space heats up, legal technology companies are taking multipronged approaches as they try to keep up with the rapid pace of change. AI strategies ran the gamut, from targeted acquisitions to building tools from scratch to integrating with select partners—or a combination of all three.
For example, when I spoke with Katie DeBord, vice president of product strategy, and Kristin Zmrhal, vice president of product strategy at DISCO, they explained how the company founded its AI Lab in 2015 and built AI-powered products with the anticipation of generative AI maturing in due time. They said that the development of their generative AI product, Cecilia, was the result of a thoughtful and deliberate process designed to integrate data across the product for seamless linking of evidence.
On the acquisition front, examples from companies also building generative AI technology announced within the last month include 1) LexisNexis’ acquisition of Henchman contract drafting and review software in July, which will soon be integrated into LexisNexis’ products, and 2) Thomson Reuters’ announcement of the acquisition of Safe Sign Technologies, a developer of legal-specific large language models.
Robust generative AI development is on the horizon
A final trend that emerged was that the easy AI wins have been rolled out, and more robust generative AI development is on the near horizon for many companies. In keeping with this idea, last year’s integration into legal products of “ChatGPT skins” was commonly referenced with derision during conversations.
Instead, the shifting focus was on thoughtfully integrating generative AI into existing software, with many acknowledging that this process requires significant time and resources. As a result, at this year’s conference, many generative AI announcements consisted of development roadmaps or the release of new, improved versions of generative AI functionality into software.
For example, both LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters rolled out completely revamped versions of their generative AI assistants. LexisNexis introduced Protégé, a legal assistant tailored to meet each user’s specific needs and workflows. Thomson Reuters unveiled CoCounsel 2.0, a supercharged version of its generative AI assistant that was released last year, grounded in technology obtained through its acquisition of Casetext’s CoCounsel.
Finally, Damien Riehl, vice president and solutions champion at vLex, showcased a “build it from the ground up” approach. He provided a demo of vLex’s generative AI assistant, Vincent AI, that highlighted the significant progress they’ve made integrating AI into their legal research platform. The intuitive generative AI interface included a host of innovative functionalities that streamline legal research, contract analytics, document creation and summarization, timeline creation, document comparison and analysis, and much more.
The bottom line: The promise of GenAI for our profession is great, but all signs point to the realization of its potential being six months out or more. So the question remains: Will generative AI change the legal landscape, ushering in an era of frictionless, seamless legal work? Or have we reached the pinnacle of its development, left only with empty promises? I think it’s the former since there is so much potential, and many companies are investing significantly in AI development, but only time will tell. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the wise words of Lyle Lanley: “(T)here’s nothin’ on Earth like a genuine bonafide electrified six-car monorail! I’ve sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!”
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York-based attorney, author and journalist, and she is the principal legal insight strategist at MyCase, a company that offers legal practice management software for small firms. She is the nationally recognized author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers and is co-author of Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, both published by the American Bar Association. She writes regular columns for ABAJournal.com and Above the Law, has authored hundreds of articles for other publications, and regularly speaks at conferences regarding the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @nikiblack, or she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
