When Deputy General Counsel of Microsoft Kevin Harrang took the stage at LegalTech in New York, a silence overcame the audience – a silence that was intermittently disturbed by the bleeps and dings of BlackBerries, Treos and cell phones.

These interruptions were fitting, considering that Harrang's keynote speech at the annual legal technology conference was about the evolution of technology in the legal profession. Twenty-five years ago, at LegalTech's inaugural conference, Harrang could expect complete silence during his speech. But in the 21st century, business and law are so tied to wireless and digital technologies that in any room full of lawyers, you are bound to hear the beeping of a BlackBerry – or a dozen.

This set the tone for the three-day event, one that brought together pocket-protector-wearing software engineers and lawyers looking for the magic application that will discover, retain, destroy and manage all at the push of a button and at minimal cost.

Hundreds of vendors hawked their services and software to the thousands of attendees. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish one from the next. After seeing nearly 50 booths that service e-discovery alone, one begins to wonder how different each company's services and products really are. And the truth is, they're not that different from one another. What one company calls a “revolutionary feature,” such as context-driven searches, another company claims to have perfected three years ago. When one company claims to have serviced the largest single e-discovery conversion task, another company boasts an equally self-congratulatory statistic. For a lawyer in search of the best tool for his or her company, weeding through the winners and losers posed a difficult task.

But there are some fascinating advances in store for the corporate legal field. As vendors increasingly partner with each other, the state of e-discovery, which is currently splintered into a number of processes each requiring its own program, will hopefully become more cohesive. Eventually, there may be a one-stop service that can handle all of a company's e-discovery needs, saving time and sparing confusion.

Other advances on display at LegalTech included matter-management software that parallels wikis in structure and usage, voice recognition software that can transcribe as you speak (though this technology still lacks enough reliability to be useful for audio e-discovery requests) and software that melds e-billing and case management into one program that also benchmarks the output of your outside counsel.

Aside from the three floors of booths, there were dozens of lectures. Though most were geared toward the law firm partner, many were pertinent to the corporate counsel, including forums on e-discovery practices and vendor shopping.

But the dominant topic of conversation on the exhibit floor was the proposed changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which go into effect in December. Many described it as the Sarbanes-Oxley of the legal-tech subfield. The new rules codify a lot of current e-discovery practices while also demanding more accountability. Although counsel laud the arrival of some clarity in this convoluted age of e-discovery, many bemoan the new rules because of their complexity and the burden it puts on them throughout the course of litigation.

LegalTech was a grand exhibition of solutions. Vendors talked up their products as if they could end legal-technology woes once and for all. But behind the optimism, behind the sales pitches, there was trepidation. It's too early to tell how the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will affect the legal landscape. But if the past is any determinant of the future, technology most likely will continue to advance to keep up with the ever-evolving legal field.