Last week’s ILTACON 2025 conference was more exciting than ever before. In addition to a bagful of awesome tchotchkes, I took home ILTA’s new book Lessons in Leadership. Published in hardcover and actually made of paper (a nice break from screens), the book is an extraordinary compilation of personal stories from prominent ILTAns who share meaningful quotes and pivotal moments where they led, learned, and overcame obstacles. The list of contributing authors (thanks for the autographs, guys!) includes some of the most respected people in legal tech. Their anecdotes touted themes such as listening, asking questions, and curiosity as secrets to their success.
Many of the authors mentioned ILTA’s myriad contributions to their professional careers. Their collective perspectives clarified so many unique aspects of the ILTA community and how it has impacted our legal tech industry. Reading the book really brought home the realization that legal tech is not like any other industry, and how ILTA has made a huge contribution to those of us who have found our home-away-from-home in this gem of a niche.
The ILTACON Exhibit Hall’s aisles were overflowing with thousands of people - the energy was electric. Many attending were the usual suspects (veteran ILTA members and business partners), but the conference also welcomed an abundance of new technology startups that have chosen to focus their creativity and acumen on benefiting the legal space.
Having been an observer in legal tech for many years now, I have witnessed the industry constantly grappling with acknowledging the irreplaceable value of human contribution, while also recognizing the importance of applying technology’s vast capabilities to help with legal work. People and tech, tech and people – when it comes to law firms and corporate legal, one can no longer exist without the other. ILTACON provides a global forum for important discussions to take place about how the two intersect, thus propelling the evolution of this industry forward.
One panel discussion entitled “Orchestrating Intelligence: AI Agents in the Legal Space”, which included Lisa Erickson (recently promoted to Senior VP, Product & AI at Aderant), provided a helpful explanation of agentic AI and strategies for applying it to law practice. One of the speakers compared AI agents to good co-workers who have some autonomy to sense, decide, and act, but who are frequently checking back with an authorized person before proceeding. Agents are goal-oriented entities that will figure out how to achieve that goal based on the resources they can access.
The ”Orchestrating Intelligence” speakers broached the subject many of us have been thinking – is agentic AI just hype, and what impact is it truly having? The panel held that agentic AI enabled people to do more than before with higher quality. More mundane, competitive, loss-leading work can now be automated to allow people to focus on more high-value work for clients. This will not happen overnight, but the panel projected that in 5 years, agentic AI will have fundamentally changed the way things work and the skills people will need. If agentic AI eventually takes away the tasks that everyone is good at, that leaves the harder decisions and tasks for people to tackle. Efficiency must be balanced with accuracy, and human verification of AI outcomes will become much more important as agentic AI is entrusted with more legal-related work.
In addition to the educational sessions, I carved out time to attend two vendor company update sessions: Harvey, a relative newcomer to legal tech, and Aderant, a veteran software provider.
Harvey’s meteoric rise and $5B valuation have captured the attention of the mainstream tech and business communities, raising the industry’s profile worldwide. Co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg spoke about his initial work as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers and his switch to legal tech with Harvey. The product demo was very slick and impressive. Perhaps even more influential, though, was commentary by two Harvey clients: Gina Lynch, Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer of Paul Weiss, and Barbara Taylor, Chief Knowledge Officer at DLA Piper, respectively two of the world’s largest law firms. Both Lynch and Taylor attested to Harvey’s usefulness and high levels of lawyer satisfaction. One of them noted that when the firm’s lawyers first come to their desks in the morning, they open Outlook and Harvey first before anything else.
Aderant is also viewing AI as essential to its present and future success. The company just grew its AI portfolio further by acquiring the legal tech assets of HerculesAI, including products Apollo, Verify, and Athena, and the teams working on those products. In the company’s ILTACON update, Aderant CEO and President Chris Cartrett noted that the new products will be integrated into Aderant’s product suite to complement and innovate the company’s work-to-cash platform. Cartrett emphasized the importance of software providers to remain open to foster (not squash) innovation. He outlined his vision for providing an unmatched client experience by focusing on product, process, and people. MADDI, Aderant’s fully trained AI-powered virtual associate, is being woven throughout the company’s various products to positively impact law firms’ entire work-to-cash process.
One of the most memorable experiences of ILTACON was trying out mmData, a new extended reality (XR) learning suite for ediscovery training and CLE, which just opened beta testing. mmData was founded by Melissa Heidrick, who was determined to revolutionize ediscovery training. As I donned the mmData virtual reality headset and visor, I was privy to a mind-bending 360-degree visual experience that was engaging, interactive, and unforgettable. From a collapsing wind turbine in a snowy landscape to friendly animals and more, the mmData experience was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Heidrick notes that, “Our tools bring users into environments where learning becomes second nature. Designed to deepen comprehension and sharpen legal analysis, we approach immersion in ways that keep attorneys focused and fully engaged, gauging comprehension and providing real-time feedback on legal analysis.” Focused on data privacy, mmData beta test participation comes with access to 1/2 hour of nationally accredited immersive CLE, for free.
These varied impressions embody what ILTACON is all about – discussion, learning, connection, and new unforgettable experiences which transform how we experience the legal tech world. Much gratitude and many thanks to the ILTA staff and leadership who make this exceptional conference possible, and who infused the 2025 ILTACON conference with so much value and joy. Thank you for the many lessons in leadership – I’m already looking forward to ILTACON 2026!