Woah... well, that was an awesome week! Last week's ILTACON2024 was our first event after our commitment to the legal industry. I couldn't be more excited by how the market has evolved since ILTACON2023 and how our new offerings for law firms resonated with both visitors to our booth and attendees at my panel session.
As I've said before, on social media and this blog, law firms appear to be the best positioned of almost any industry to set standards and lead the way with information governance (IG). Principally, this was based upon my view that their relationships with their clients and the nature of the data they hold on their behalf is uniquely risky and valuable. However, until last week, I struggled to find much more than a passing interest from many legal firm buyers in IG use cases. They've always understood the principles, but prioritizing them within tight budgets was difficult.
Chatting to visitors at our booth, our technology and delivery partners, and our legal advisory group, the consensus appears that concerns about generative AI had perhaps tipped the balance. Never before have I seen such a continuous stream of informed visitors to our booth seeking data discovery as a cornerstone of their IG programs. They sought ways to get on top of their runaway unstructured data footprint and recognized that other tools in their portfolio had too many shortfalls for their needs. While none of them named AI initiatives their driving force, they all responded to increased demands from their clients and insurers in the face of breach risk and concerns that poorly implemented AI initiatives might cause some other data loss.
With an increasingly busy booth throughout the week, I didn't get much chance to visit keynotes or track sessions. Still, I did participate in a panel session alongside Jordan Fox from inOutsource, Andrew Corridore of Foley Hoag and Julie Colgan from Epiq. This year's panel addressed how data metrics should underpin any IG effort and, by becoming data driven, IG teams can increase efficiency and move from reactive to proactive in their efforts. I was pleased to be able to bring our value to the discussion both from experience in the field and by illustrating how data discovery services make IG data metrics accessible to any firm. Attendance at the panel was great, as was the ensuing discussion. Next year, I will re-double my efforts to bring more evidence and fewer concepts to these discussions because that seems to be what the audience asks for.
Most events bring announcements, but ILTACON 2024 had more than its fair share for us, given our increasing focus on the needs of the legal market. Our new NetDocuments partnership stands out alongside the latest case study from our partners at Robinson+Cole when Jim Merrifield, their director of IG, is a prominent leader. What's more, we were able to preview our latest research efforts to find and identify unfiled or misfiled client matters in unstructured data repositories.
Thinking about the overall conference—from tech and service partners to customers, prospects, and audience questions—I'm pleased to reflect that I think the tide is turning for IG, at least in the legal industry. By this, I mean that the pieces that should be core components of any IG program are becoming a priority for firms' leadership. As is so often the case, the proverbial straw may be the thing that breaks the camel's back. In this case, in balancing outside counsel guidelines, regulation, and the increasing likelihood of breach with competing demands on budgets, last year's unprecedented hype for generative AI seems to be tipping the scales.
ARMA InfoCon in Houston is next for us, and I'll look for evidence from other industries. While it would be great to see the same pattern, I think I'd actually be quite pleased to see the legal industry taking the lead.
