Conference Call

With so much of life moving online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, legal conferences appear to be following suit. Case in point, document technology solutions provider Litera will be hosting a virtual conference titled The Changing Lawyer LIVE! from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, which will focus on the changes the pandemic has wrought on lawyers' day-to-day work.

Panel sessions will include: Adapting Legal Tech to New Priorities; Knowledge Management Acceleration; and The Work-From-Home Legal Professional. Each of the $25 registration fees collected will go directly to the CDC Foundation's Emergency Response Fund to assist in efforts against COVID-19.

So what's in it for Litera? Julian Morgan, the company's chief marketing officer, said that Litera usually has a lot of contact with customers during trade shows put on by the likes of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium and others. But with even CLOC's annual Las Vegas Institute moving online this year due to COVID-19 related concerns, it became apparent that those opportunities may be few and far between in 2020.

"I think everyone right now misses the sort of in-person interaction a little bit. The isolation can be quite tough, and I think now more than ever we're reminded of the importance of the personal interaction that you get when you get to meet someone face-to-face," Morgan said.

It's not the first time that Litera has considered hosting a legal conference, but the constraints associated with travel and securing a physical location had proven too large a burden. Putting together a conference based in a virtual space like Zoom, on the other hand, was a different story. Litera started planning the event towards the end of March and is expecting between 200 to 300 participants.

Morgan thinks that the ease of setting up a virtual conference could see more legal tech companies originating their own events in the future. "I do think the barrier to entry has really dropped, and I would imagine that people can expect to see more of these [virtual conferences], at least from us," Morgan said.

Some companies have already gotten a head start. Case management and billing software provider Rocket Matter hosted a two-day virtual conference titled Rocket Aid last week, garnering 490 attendees and a combined total of $22,250 for the United Way, Feeding America and Pro Bono Net.

Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter, said that in a "sensitive environment," the company didn't feel comfortable pursuing its usual campaign of email marketing. The virtual conference provided a viable alternative that took only three weeks to prepare using the combination of a customized WordPress platform and Zoom videoconferencing.

Much of that time was spent thinking about how to make the virtual arena into something that could approximate the kind of interaction gleaned from a a more traditional conference setting. Panel leaders engaged with audience members in real time using Zoom's chat function and also deployed interactive polls where applicable.

Port foresees a possible future where these kinds of virtual formats are used in conjunction with in-person conferences to provide a cheaper alternative for applicants unable to travel. However, this approach could put more pressure on event organizers to differentiate the two experiences, or at least make the virtual conference feel like more than just a panel webcast.

"They won't succeed unless they are conceived of in different ways. … If it's a virtual conference, it's got to be like there's an experience for a live football game, and if people are going to go in that direction they'll have to keep that in mind," Port said.

Morgan at Litera seconded the potential difficulty of holding guests' attention during a virtual conference. After all, lawyers attending a panel held in a hotel conference room only have so many places they can go. But online the potential for distractions is much greater.

"People can get up from their computer at any time or they can open a different tab on their browser. … At the same time I think it will drive how engaging the content is because we have to keep people interested," Morgan said.