Ludivine Sellem
Tech&Law Intern
Recently, one of the largest conferences in the legal tech sector at the international level was held: Legalweek 2024.
This year, the event took place in New York. With over 6000 attendees and around 300 speakers coming from 34 countries, Legalweek is a real and huge opportunity for all legal professionals, IT persons, technologists, and software providers but also marketers who want to learn more about the legal tech industry and the current transformations which are operating in the field due to the introduction of AI technologies in legal services.
Thus, the main goal of Legalweek is to explore the latest trends in terms of technologies, regulations, and business but also analyze the potential of the new technologies just like their impact on the activities of the legal field.
During the four days of the conference, participants could network and get information on many cutting-edge topics dealing with the legal tech world such as Legal Automation, eDiscovery, Data Science, Legal operations, legal business strategies, litigation, alternative legal services, or practice management through different workshops (the General counsel workshop and the AI workshop) but also with “educational tracks” like panel sessions, case studies and “TED-style talks”.
The flagship topic at the conference was generative AI. Most of the discussions were focused on the undeniable potential of AI to help law firms gain efficiency with their daily tasks like contract management, legal research, E-discovery, or even litigation. Legal, regulatory, and ethical issues linked to the use of AI such as data privacy, hallucination, and cybersecurity were also discussed.
This event demonstrates once again the many advantages for businesses of embracing AI and other new technologies in their operations. Unfortunately, in practice, most legal professionals are struggling to exploit AI particularly Generative AI for their day-to-day work. According to Concilio’s Legalweek 2024 survey[1] the legal industry is not yet prepared to leverage Generative AI potentialities. With all the concerns linked to its use, corporate law departments like law firms hesitate to incorporate this new technology.
The main explanation claimed is the lack of knowledge as well as the insufficient technical expertise to use in a good way GenAI. Thus, only 10% of respondents to this survey answered that their legal team was educated on GenAI and was able to implement it to support the activities. As a consequence, the majority of legal firms wait for wider industry adoption of this technology before using it. For business, GenAI is promising but not well enough known at the moment. Conferences such as Legalweek 2024 therefore help significantly the legal industry to acquire a better understanding of technologies such as GenAI.
Despite the excellent quality of the presentations and a record-breaking audience this year, numerous facts of sexual misconduct have unfortunately been reported. Sexual harassment is a real scourge in the workplace and like any industry, the issue exists in the legal tech. Many women who were in attendance at this event shared anonymously their stories about inappropriate behavior that occurred during the four days of the conference.
ALM, Legalweek organizer has been informed of those inappropriate acts and immediately reacted on its social media by strongly condemning those behaviors even if those were not committed on-site at Legalweek but at unaffiliated venues in New York City.
ALM takes seriously the harassment issue. In the weeks following the events, the organizer took several measures to ensure more safety for its participants during its conferences. Now, for any future conference, attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors as well as delegates will have to comply with the ALM’s anti-harassment policy at the time of their registration to a conference. The implementation of these measures will prevent such behaviors and ensure they do not occur again in the future.
[1] https://www.consilio.com/consilio-finds-63-of-legal-professionals-waiting-for-human-expertise-to-catch-up-before-adopting-generative-ai/
ALM takes seriously the harassment issue. In the weeks following the events, the organizer took several measures to ensure more safety for its participants during its conferences. Now, for any future conference, attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors as well as delegates will have to comply with the ALM’s anti-harassment policy at the time of their registration to a conference. The implementation of these measures will prevent such behaviors and ensure they do not occur again in the future.
