Legal Commentary

Numbers Count: ITLA executive director Randi Mayes kicked off the keynote address at ILTA at the Gaylord National Hotel near Washington, D.C., with the relatively-happy news that despite firm travel cuts about 850 members were at the five-day conference.

Later in the day, program manager Peggy Weschler, speaking to the vendors at the ILTA/InsideLegal vendor educational meeting, told the group that there were about 1,400 vendors and consultants in attendance -- which presents a dilemma for the ILTA management team, because they try to keep the members/vendors-consultants ratio at 50/50 to make sure the event maintains its character as a primarily educational event.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the first line item that firms will cut is travel for their support staff, no matter how superb the educational programs are, and how much bang for the buck they deliver. A short-sighted move, of course, but we won't go there.

Weschler firmly cautioned the vendors not to stalk members and pounce on them in efforts to sell their products, acknowledging that these difficult times are hard on the vendors as well as the firms. She predicted that next year, membership attendance would also be down, and sent a strong message that if the vendors abused the privilege of their ratio this year, that next year, the number of available booth slots would be cut back.

She also asked everyone to be cognizant that while a top agenda of ILTA is to provide peer-to-peer networking opptys, that it is the educational component to gets the law firms to approve the travel requests. Her message,  in essence, think twice before you post that picture of your favorite IT director networking after midnight with a glass in hand.

The vendor sessions also addressed the challenges faced by the providers, and included not only a media panel (thank you, JoAnna, for inviting me again), as well as a panel on how vendors can sell effectively to the ILTA crowd.

But just as theme of the keynote (see next post) was "Get More from Less," I personally found the reduced attendance had some unexpected positives (I think ILTA drew about 1,200 members last year, I don't remember Peggy's exact figure). This year, it  feels a little less crowded than Disneyland on a hot, humid Saturday July morning, and that's a good thing.