Techshow Attendees Assemble: A preview of this year’s show

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the ABA Journal, Legal Rebels Podcast, where we talk to men and women who are remaking the legal profession, changing the way the law is practiced and setting standards that will guide us into the future.

Victor Li:

If you look at this year’s ABA tech show advertising material, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re reading a comic book. Between the cartoon style illustrations and the comic book style captions and headings on the brochure and website, it’s clear what motif the tech show planners were going for. Perhaps that’s appropriate given how quickly generative and artificial intelligence tools have established a foothold in the legal industry. Like a superhero or perhaps more accurately a superhero sidekick, AI has helped save the day for a lot of lawyers. Of course, comics also bring up another image for AI, one that isn’t so warm and fuzzy. So is generative AI more like Robin, Cato, or crypto of the Superdog, or is it more like Skynet, Brainiac, or Ultron? Or maybe somewhere in between? We’ll cover that and many other things on this month’s text show preview episode of The Legal Rebels Podcast.

Tech show will take place in Chicago from March 25th to the 28th at McCormick Place. My name is Victor Li, and I’m assistant managing editor for the ABA Journal. My guests today are tech show 2026 co-chairs, Brett Byrney and Patrick Wright. Brett is the founder of Burney Consultants, which provides e-discovery consulting and litigation support and teaches lawyers how to use Max in their everyday practice. Patrick is the managing partner of the right firm, a family law practice in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Brett and Patrick are here today to talk about what you can expect from tech show this year. Welcome to the show, guys.

Patrick Wright:

Oh, thanks for having us.

Brett Burney:

Yeah, thank you. We need to hire a Victor to write our introductions. Man, that was great with the superhero stuff, but we’ll get to that at back in just a moment here.

Victor Li:

Well, hopefully it’s more superhero than super villain, right?

Brett Burney:

I like it.

Victor Li:

So obviously I just gave a very quick elevator version of your bio. So can you each tell us a little bit more about yourself? Let’s start with Brett. Can you tell me about yourself and your background?

Brett Burney:

Yeah. So my quote day job is electronic discovery. I work with a lot of lawyers at law firms, corporate legal departments, and helping them sort of navigate that the crazy world today of collecting data, processing it, reviewing it, producing it to the other side, a lot of civil litigation, but that bleeds over into all kinds of things like collecting text messages for even criminal matters, that kind of a thing. So I work with a company also called NextPoint that’s based there in Chicago and just been involved and excited about technology pretty much all of my career and naturally fell into the ABA tech show early on. I think the first year I went was maybe 2002, 2003, which is always held in Chicago, of course. And just a little bit of a geek fest. I mean, truly there are places there for everybody if you’re new to technology or not comfortable with it.

And then there’s a lot of us that get together almost every year now and just really enjoy geeking out and talking about all of the ways that technology today can help lawyers, continues to help lawyers and how it changes. So many things from email to cloud to AI today, it’s just really amazing. It’s exciting times.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. And how about you, Patrick?

Patrick Wright:

Well, Victor, I’m a 31 year regular practicing lawyer. I mean, Brett’s laughing at me, but I have a tie on. If our board was on here, they’d probably be making fun of me right now for wearing a tie. But I’m like in the trenches practicing lawyer. I have a small firm in North Texas and the bulk of my practice is family law. But years ago, I got involved in the Law Practice Division with the ABA and then also subsequently with the Law Practice Committee with the State Bar of Texas. And so in my role with the StateBar and also work with the ABA, the majority of it has been with sort of small firms, practice management, and then technology. And then it’s sort of morphed into the technology space from systems and software now head on into AI. And so now, not just with the ABA, but with the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, my local county, I like Brett go all over everywhere trying to help lawyers educate them on technology.

And ABA Tech Show is just a humongous part of that that brings really a ton of value to lawyers, practitioners, educators, students even, as far as what’s going on in the marketplace. And so that’s kind of how I got involved with it. But yeah, like what Brett said, it’s just a lot of fun being in the space right now.

Victor Li:

So I do want to say the right firm, that’s a great name for a law firm. It’s a good name your name isn’t Patrick Wrong, right?

Patrick Wright:

Yeah, it really is. Well, I’ve been accused of being wrong before by co-counsel. But interesting, Victor, that I did have the state bar originally tell me I couldn’t use that name because they thought at that time it was a trade name. And so I got a rejection letter that I could not use my own name. We quickly cleared that up because my website is the right lawyers, no play on words, of course. But yeah, it’s a good observation.

Victor Li:

Yeah. I’ve heard Texas, they can be quite strict with those rules about advertising.

Patrick Wright:

I’m going to be on my best behavior.

Victor Li:

So yeah, so this question will be for each of you then. How many shows have this been for you guys? And let’s start with Patrick first. What number show is this for you?

Patrick Wright:

I want to say this is five or six for me.

Victor Li:

Okay. And Brett?

Brett Burney:

I think my first one had to be either 2002 or 2003. So I’m about what, 22, 23 right now for ABA Tech Show. Yeah. Yeah. And just by the way, to add on that, this is the 41st annual ABA tech show. Obviously, COVID throws a little bit of wrenches into it, but last year we celebrated the 40th anniversary of ABA Tech Show when this year is 41.

Victor Li:

Yeah. I think this is my 13th

Brett Burney:

Tech

Victor Li:

Show. Yeah. All in a row. And I remember that COVID one, that was weird. I mean, you do what you can, right?

Brett Burney:

Of

Victor Li:

Course. Yeah. And also I remember, I think the 2020 show was right before everything shut down. So there was a weird-

Brett Burney:

Right.

Victor Li:

It was just a weird atmosphere at that point. Everyone was kind of like, “Hey, this is going to be the last show for a while.” I

Patrick Wright:

Was saying, Victor, I should probably add that into my count. I’d blocked that from my mind.

Victor Li:

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess for both of you then, I mean, and even five years or six years, I guess, is a lot of things have changed. How has the show changed in the time that you’ve been going to tech show? I guess let’s start with Brett. How has the show changed from when you first started going to where it is now?

Brett Burney:

Bigger and number one. I mean, so this is actually the second year that we are in the McCormick Center, convention center in Chicago. So we talk about that 2020 ABA tech show that was held at the Hyatt Regency on the river in Chicago, right? Yep. And before that, we were at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue, right? The historic Hilton, which originally was like the Stevens, I think it was John Paul Stevens Hotel, right? It was like their family. That was there for a long time. And even before that, it was the Sheraton on the river, almost right across from the Higher Regency. I mean, it’s always been in Chicago. It’s always been hosted in Chicago. And so just that alone, Victor, I mean, the fact that the size has grown to what it is today is just amazing. And the fact that we’re in the McCormick Center, which is huge, and it was a little Caverners last year.

You remember that?

Patrick Wright:

Yeah.

Brett Burney:

Although it’s going to be a little bit different, just quickly going to the comic theme, I know you might come back to this, but this year it’s actually the same time as what we generally call the Chicago Comic-Con. Yeah,

Victor Li:

I saw

Brett Burney:

That. Yeah. Yeah. The Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, C2E2. So in addition to the 2,500 attendees or so for ABA Tech Show, there’s going to be another 100,000 attendees that will be in cosplay for the Chicago Comic Con. Anyway, so that alone, just the size of it and just to see how people have continued to flock to it, sometimes even just looking for answers or a lot of times what we get the feedback from so many attendees is always the educational sessions is what they’re looking for, the networking with other similar law firms that they wanted to say, “Hey, how are you handling this? What are you doing?” And then third is the expo hall. So many attendees just really appreciate coming to one location and being able to jump around to different booths and talk to different vendors and ask them like, “How do we do this?

How can we solve for that? ” So even that, I’ve seen the difference in the Expo Hall and some of the things that used to be a lot of cloud providers and it used to be a lot of eDiscovery providers and all of those are still there, but just seeing the change. And today, of course, it’s pretty much, it’s just inundated with AI wherever you look on that, which is a good thing. Again, this is a place where we want people to come and to get some understanding from some of that. And so do you ask about how it’s changed? It’s even those topics have also changed. We still have things that are the same. We still have the basics as we call it. I think we call it the core skills is like how to use Microsoft Word. And we’ve got fantastic speakers on that and Outlook and things that are just the core makeup of the tools that we use every day.

But then we have sessions also that focus still on cybersecurity, but then we’re pushing it a little bit more how to do … We have workshops on AI, how to create AI prompts, for example, or use notebooks, AI notebooks, for example. So always every year there’s just changing to try to better accommodate the topics and the questions that people have. Yeah. I saw

Victor Li:

The CTV2 thing. I was wondering if you guys did that intentionally or not.

Brett Burney:

Well, now you know the comic book theme, right?

Victor Li:

Oh, okay. Now’s starting to make sense.

Brett Burney:

Speakers are there because we figured, Victor, we should just … I mean, if you can’t be … We’re not going to beat them. You’re going to walk through McCormick City. They’re going to be there. You might as well join in. The fun. And so we even have named the tracks. If you’re looking at some of the tracks, for example, that we had, like I said, the tech core, the litigation superpowers, our cybersecurity track is guardians of the data. Yeah,

Victor Li:

I saw that.

Brett Burney:

So we’re trying to like, let’s go for it. We’re going to do what we can, taming the machines. That’s what we’re calling our AI workshop track. So we’re there part and parcel. So hey, if you come to tech show, wear a cape, dress up as Daredevil. Whatever you want to do, we’re here to welcome you.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. How about you, Patrick? How has the show changed from the time that you first started?

Patrick Wright:

Brett’s naming all these places. So maybe I’ve actually been there to more tech shows than I remember because all these places I’ve been to. So I’m like, maybe I’ve been to more. But I would say this. So I kind of have a little different perspective. I come from Texas and so we have big conferences in Texas. And so I just this last year chaired one of our family law conferences, which literally is the largest family law conference in the world. I think I checked from an attendance standpoint. So I’m sort of in the same year, 12 month timeframe being involved in these two big conferences. And so I’ve sort of like comparison, I would sort of reiterate and sort of hit on what Brett had hit on, which is it’s gotten a lot bigger by nature of the conference getting bigger, necessitated sort of the location change because we sort of needed more space.

And I think everybody was with the understanding and I think attendees shoot to understand that that’s been sort of a process, a working process that we’re working out kinks and trying to make it better. That’s everybody’s goal. But bigger space, I mean, the vendor floor is just absolutely amazing now as compared if you remember some of the hotels we were in down the basement and so it’s a trade show. And so as compared to some of the other conferences that I go to, certainly in Texas, we don’t have a hundred plus vendors and you don’t have that opportunity if you’re even a first time attendee or someone who’s been to this conference every year, there’s been so much change in the marketplace. If you really think about it, where else do you have the opportunity to walk a floor and to walk up to Boost and actually talk to the people, look at the software, demo it like all in one place.

And pretty much all the big players are there. Everybody, if you’re a small firm or a solo firm or even a large firm, there’s just a lot of stuff there. So I think size, obviously location, we have two keynotes this year that’s new that we’ve tried to expand. I don’t want to like go all into that. I will if you want me to, but that’s something that’s different. And then the other thing about it too this year is that we’ve really tried to look and see what’s going on out in the world. Victor, you know, Brett certainly will emphasize this because what he does for a living, but it’s changing so fast. And so because it’s really hard if you’re doing these conferences when you’re trying to plan out, because we started this a year ago and started trying to forecast and look out and to see what we thought would be relevant and appealing to people and lawyers in this space.

And so we’ve done our best job with our help of our amazing board and they are amazing. I mean, this is like a really great board and the ABA. We’ve tried to come up with content that we think is going to be relevant and to project out. So I think content’s amazing. We tried to make the tracks a little bit more appealing this year from a content standpoint. We’ve got two keynotes. We’ve got more vendors, new location. I mean, it’s just a revamped, sort of reworked, still the same amazing show, but it’s growing up. And so it’s getting older. And so in that being said, we are trying to grow with it and grow with the times and stay up to date as best we all can with the emerging technology.

Victor Li:

Yeah. Although I have to say, I still have a soft spot for the old Hilton. I did like that venue a lot. There’s a lot of charm to it. Plus, I knew where everything was, so if I needed to kind of duck out for a little bit to kind of write something, I could find like a nice quiet spot. But no, I get where you’re coming from. I mean, I think the Hilton probably was a little bit too small. And then obviously then with the Hyatt, I mean, it’s a good space and whatnot, but yeah, I mean, with McCormick space, obviously it’s just such a huge venue. I mean, it does something to feel though, I felt last year though, maybe it was a little too big and maybe that was … But also, I think part of it was that there was nothing else going on in the other convention area, so that maybe that added to it.

Yeah. So maybe that kind of added to it a little bit. So it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like this year with the hustle and bustle. So if you see someone dress in the Terminator, there’s a 50% chance that they’re coming to that show. All right. So let’s take a quick break for word from our sponsor and then we’ll be right back.

And we’re back. So let’s talk about this year’s show. You talked a little bit about some new things that we can expect, but first let’s get some details. How many attendees are you expecting to be at the show as of now?

Brett Burney:

It’s a good question. And in fact, the Law Practice Division of the ABA is who tracks a lot of this right now. I mean, we see it going back and forth. And we find in the last month or so that there’s a lot more that come on, but we’re probably expecting between 2,100 and 2,500, somewhere around there. And then you have vendors that come in as well. There’s a lot of people from the Chicago area that come in, either maybe just to go to the Expo Hall, for example, or sometimes they come in just for one day of sessions. So we’re tracking very well from the last few years in what we’ve seen and have high expectations.

Patrick Wright:

I would say this, Victor, just so you know, because we are a tech conference, that we are actually using AI to track. So while Brett and I both are sworn to double secret secrecy on numbers, I can just say at the moment we’re ahead of where we were, and I can say that the way our system’s set up, we’re tracking it literally by the hour, which we have never had before. And so I would say the ABA has done amazing with that, but I’ll say that’s a new technology internally that we’ve been using that’s really going to provide a lot of data for us going forward. But you never know on conferences, you have a lot of market conditions right now, a lot of stuff going on in the world. So it’s kind of hard to say, but like what the final number would be.

But I think that Brett’s in the ballpark. But like I said, it’s kind of weird now when you’re doing these conferences about what your attendance is a little different.

Victor Li:

Yeah, no, I get that. I mean, because I ask this question every year and it’s very similar to the answers that I usually get because yeah, I mean, I think last year even there was like a, if I recall, maybe it was last year or maybe the year before, there was like a big snowstorm I think or some

Patrick Wright:

Kind of business.

Victor Li:

We had

Patrick Wright:

Weather last year.

Victor Li:

Yeah. So people couldn’t fly in on the day that they were supposed to. And so sometimes they come in the next day, but sometimes they don’t come in. I remember that. So yeah, obviously I know you got to take the attending number with a grain of salt, but yeah, I just figured I’d ask for this ballpark it.

Patrick Wright:

It’s a good question. We deal with it daily.

Victor Li:

Yeah. Gotcha. So I talked about AI in the intro obviously and maybe went a little overboard with the comic thing, but so I’ll ask this to you, Brett. How can lawyers best utilize AI and how would you recommend that lawyers wanting to know more about us or spend their time with the show?

Brett Burney:

Yeah, that’s a good question. And similar to what Patrick was talking about, we literally start planning this show right after, immediately after the last show. So we’ve been talking about this for a year. And so in one sense, we had a lot of discussion as to what is going to be important a year from now, because as you well know, it’s so fast, it’s so overwhelming with how quickly things are changing. And so it was important for us at least to try to do our best to kind of expect what is going to be important. And then the second thing I’ll say in that is we also had discussions internally along those lines of, let’s maybe not have a specific AI track. We had many discussions to be like, in a year’s time, we think AI is probably going to be baked into just about everything we’re talking about, whether it’s Microsoft Word or cybersecurity, our practice management, our document management.

And so we felt it was important to not have an AI track, which I feel like a lot of conferences do and for good reason, but we are just like, if you look at some of the sessions, even if it’s like a core technology track or if it’s something on cybersecurity, guess what? There’s AI that’s built into that or litigation. Another one of our big tracks is litigation or electronic discovery is what, we call it litigation superpowers, but there’s AI all over the place in that, right? And so we just kind of wanted to make sure that it was baked into all of those individual sessions. Now that said, we do actually have a track that we wanted to provide on AI more from a workshop standpoint. So we have a track that we call AI workshops where we wanted people to go into the room and learn how to create the right prompts, how to use Google Notebooks, for example, how to use Microsoft Copilot.

Ben Shores is a longtime legal technology consultant. I’ve served with him many years on the tech show board. Formerly at Microsoft itself, he is a fantastic speaker on talking about Copilot. That was some of our most well attended sessions last year. So from things from that aspect, it’s so important for us to make sure that people leave and come to the tech show and leave with some very practical technologies that they can use or tips that they can use or workflows that they can use. That resonated with us as the planning board so much. And so that can be applicable whether you’re just starting out with Copilot or whether you’ve been using Copilot for a while, you’re going to walk away with something that you can utilize on that Monday when you get back to your office.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. I mean, obviously having attended so many of the shows and whatnot, obviously sometimes then you guys end up not bringing things back or you decide to maybe change things or maybe-

Patrick Wright:

Or they scare you.

Victor Li:

Oh yeah, or that too. So I guess Patrick, I’ll ask you this. How do you guys decide what to maybe not do or to discontinue or maybe to change or to bring it back maybe in a different form?

Patrick Wright:

We’ve done this different ways over the years, all right? I mean, I’ve seen it done every way to everyone comes up with their talkings and Brett knows what I’m talking about right now. And there’s like a giant sticky wall with all these topics laid out, right? And then two, I think this year probably, I’m not saying this because Brett and I are on here, but I think from the process I’ve seen, I think it was probably one of the easiest process because we had such great ideas. I really, Brett will know because I said this, that I really think that you go to the cutting room floor and you could probably have another three conferences for the amount of material that we came up with. But what we were trying to do is hit topics that we thought that our audience would like, and Brett’s 100% right.

We contemplated having an AI track. We decided we wanted to do a workshop, but we also wanted to not forget that that AI is a part of a regular practice, but there’s so many other like softwares out there and products out there that the regular practitioner is using. For example, discussion about Word and things like that, that really people only use a portion of it. And so we wanted the conferences attendee to not just be overwhelmed with just AI, but to really look at some other things in their practices that they could take away with, such things like cybersecurity, training your staff, and then planning for the worst, eDiscovery, which Brett’s a master on. And then also like we’ve got like a great one on like tracking people and products, location based technologies, sort of for the litigation track for evidence, which is kind of cool.

And so, and another one on deep fakes. And so some of these things are AI related, but they’re really sort of things that we saw in the marketplace because we wanted someone to walk away because if you’re a litigator, you’ve got these issues in litigation. If you’re a regular practitioner and you’re running a business, we’ve got a ton of marketing stuff, which if you’re a regular lawyer and you go to a lot of lawyer conferences, then what you know is, is that if you’re on any of those planning boards, you know that sometimes the marketing stuff gets pushed out the door because, well, we sometimes can’t get CLE credit for it, but there’s so much marketing stuff built in here that I think it’s really going to help the regular practitioner walk away from this with tools they can implement to not only make their practice better, but to make more money.

And so there’s just a lot of stuff in here that’s really not, that’s at a basic level that’s really going to help you with your practice. Well,

Victor Li:

The money will probably definitely catch your attention. So then I guess one of you talked about keynotes and whatnot. So I guess this question, I’ll send this one to Brett just to alternate. How’d you guys decide on the keynotes this year? Why did you decide on two? Because I mean, I know there have been some tech shows in the past that have had multiple keynotes or like plenary sessions or whatnot. So why did you decide to have two keynotes this year and how did you decide on those two speakers?

Brett Burney:

Probably because there were so many suggestions. I mean, again, we started thinking about this even a year ago and I mean, there were many, many, many, many names that we just kept shuffling through our calls or the meetings where we had. And we wanted someone like Jordan Furlong, he is our keynote for Thursday morning, that knew the legal industry that has been writing about it for a long time. I mean, Jordan’s been coming to ABA tech shows for a long time. He’s written books on this, very well known from like a futurist aspect there, but even what I would call like a realist futurist, if you will. In other words, he grounds a lot of what he talks about in like practical applications of what it can do. And so we felt like that was a good way to start off with helping people understand.

I mean, I think his session is preparing the legal profession for a post AI world. So you can see he’s even already looking maybe a little bit beyond like the idea is like we’re already in an AI world. But then we wanted to leave folks at the end on Friday evening with even maybe more of a bigger picture, right? You’ve been to two days of educational tracks. And so Nille Patel is the editor-in-chief of the verge.com, which is a huge technology reporting outfit that’s been writing for a long time. A lot of us get a lot of news. In fact, I’ve just been reading them about some of the Apple announcements that happened this week, for example. And actually, he’s a trained lawyer. He actually practiced for a little bit. He always says he’s not a good lawyer, and I think his wife is actually a lawyer in New York as well.

But he turned into more of the journalist aspect of there, but he obviously, because of that, he’s got an excellent way of looking at the technology world today. We wanted to bring in some other perspectives. He talks a lot about software engineers today, which we’re lawyers like, “Do we care about that? ” Well, we should. And Nalaya is somebody that can actually kind of help us understand why that could be important. Where are some of these jobs or even some of the other applications of AI that we may not even think of just because we’re in our legal bubble, but that he can provide some of that perspective on there as well. And then I’ll turn it over to Patrick. We actually have something I’m even just as excited about on Saturday morning that we’re just getting to solidify right now and Patrick’s going to take that on.

So we wanted to give people a good reason to stay over for Saturday morning as well, and I’m very excited about this.

Patrick Wright:

Saturday morning, we can confirm that we are going to have the current president, Michelle Beke of the American Bar. We are going to have the immediate past president, Bill Bay, and we are going to have the future president, Barbara Howard, of the American Bar for a conversation on the rule of law, how we’re all navigating these historic times, how technology is implementing practices, AI is affecting law firms and everything else that we can talk about in a conversational standpoint of how lawyers are supposed to navigate what’s going on in the world right now on Saturday morning at 9:00. It’s going to be a really amazing conversation. And I don’t know, I’m sure it’s happened, but I don’t know in recent past if we’ve ever had the current, the future and the past presidents of the American Bar Association on stage to talk about these things.

And I think it also highlights sort of their commitment to the show, the understanding of the importance of what’s going on in the world in the show, and their understanding of our attendees and the value and the audience that’s there. And so we’re just grateful that they have agreed, all three of them, to come and share their wisdom and talk about what the ABA’s been going through these past years and where we’re at right now and where we’re going. I think it’s going to be a really interesting … I think we might even make it a solid hour. I think it’s going to be a really interesting hour.

Brett Burney:

They’re excited too. We had a call with them and they are very excited to be there because I don’t think two of them haven’t even been to a tech show before. Bill Bay has been to some and a very big supporter of ABA Tech Show. We are very thankful for that. So we’re just very excited. We’re excited that they’re excited to be there too.

Victor Li:

Yeah. I thought that was pretty cool when I saw that. And I’m not saying that just because the ABA sounds by paychecks, but no, I did think that was pretty cool and I look forward to that. So let’s take another quick break for word from response and I’ll be right back. And we’re back. One thing I’ve always liked about tech show is that it provides something for everyone. Neophytes can learn about basic workplace technology software while more experience conference goers can learn about more advanced cutting edge tech to make their practices more efficient. So let’s break it down for each scenario. So let’s say I’m a total neophyte, I’ve never been to tech show before. I can barely use Microsoft Word and email. I consider that to be the high point of my technological expertise. Let’s go to you first, Patrick. How would you suggest that I plan my schedule so I get the most out of the show?

Patrick Wright:

Wow. I would say that’s a fabulous question. I really love that because I seem to get caught in this bind every year because it’s like you’re stretch Armstrong and you’re pulled between what do I want to attend first. I mean, even I, when I was looking at the content and the speeches that we have, I was like, “I want to go to that and I want to go to that and I want to go to that. ” But I would just say this, look at the conference programming schedule if you haven’t been there before. And you have to understand that we actually, if you look on one of the program guides, it shows Thursday. So Thursday, Friday, and then like a half day Saturday, but we actually have our startup alley on Wednesday night, right? Yeah. And so if you’re a new person, I remember the first time I came and I saw people and they said, “Oh, I’m going to this event.” And I’m like, “What are you going to?

” And they’re like, “Start pally.” And I was like, “What’s startup ballet?” And they’re like, “Come on. ” And so I went along and I was like, so understand that there is an event going on on Wednesday night and then there’s a reception after that event. And so these are startups that have pitched their wares and will go up on stage and it’s kind of a shark tank where they’re going to do their pitch for, last I checked, three minutes, right? And so they’re going to do their pitches for three minutes. And then so you’ll get to see if you’re sort of a newbie, this emerging new technology in the legal space that you’re going to get to see before most people on the planet get to see, right? So that’s one. That’s on Wednesday night. The next day, the important thing to know is to look at that schedule, and this is where it gets complicated, because you want to look and see what topics you want to go to, but you also want to spend time in the vendor hall, right?

And so the thing I always do is I’m like, “Oh yeah, either I get in the vendor hall and I miss the speech I want to go see, or I’m in some speech and I miss the vendor hall.” So you got To balance your time out to make sure that you allocate enough time to go to those. And then the other thing I would say too is in the evenings, so we do a taste of tech show. So stop by if you’re new, stop by at the concierge booth is what I’m referring to it as. It’s going to be in the center. We’re going to have some signup sheets, go there the very first time you show up, go there. And you can actually pick a dinner. And so if you’ve never been to the show before and you want to meet people, find a topic, go to a dinner.

I mean, Chicago has amazing restaurants as we all know. And so go to a restaurant, you’ll be able to meet people. Every taste of tech show dinner that I’ve gone to, I’ve had a great time. It’s a really good place to start out and meet people as well. But I think that on the planning of it, the good thing to do is to try to pre-plan before you go and then find out what you’re interested in. And then just go to that speech or look at the topic. Or also what I’ve also done is in the past is I’ll go look at our vendor list because, and I don’t remember where it is, but there is a list in the programming guide of all the vendors and their products. And I will literally go through there and highlight all the boosts that I want to go to.

And I will go visit every single one of them to see what products they have and to demo things because I’m a law firm owner. So I want to see what’s new. Even the products that I use every day, I go buy those boosts and I’m like, “Hey, what’s new? What do y’all have? ” And so I think it’s just a good way to look at it.

Victor Li:

And I’ll over to you, Brett. So let’s say I’m somewhere in the middle. I use some tech in my practice, maybe a practice management program or some cloud software, maybe some generative AI, but I’m not like a super user or anything like that. So how would you suggest that I plan my schedule so I can get the most out

Brett Burney:

Of the show? Yeah. I don’t know that it’s that much different. Looking at the schedule, like I said, we’ve organized in the two days into five tracks for each day, if that makes sense. So I’ve already mentioned a few of them for the litigation track. We have one called the TechCore. So that’s really focused just on the core technology you use like Microsoft Word and Outlook PDF, for example. We have Guardians of the data, which is the cybersecurity. We have Conquering Change, which again, Patrick alluded to this a little bit. We felt it was important this year to actually provide, I guess, almost maybe like some soft skills, some people skills, some wellbeing kind of an angle on there, just because we do believe it’s so important. We even have one called digital detox and some of that. So if you think about it in that sense, maybe looking at the tracks, sometimes I find at least that while just like Patrick, I always want to go to like three different things every hour, but if it’s hard to decide, you can always kind of fall back onto one of those tracks.

So if you know that it’s important, the tech core is always important. We anticipate those classes to probably be full because everybody’s using Microsoft Word. Everybody’s using PDF files, right? And so if you know that there’s something you can at least fall back on, that’s a good thing to at least say, “Okay, well, if I can’t decide this is what I’m going to go to just because this is what I need.” Patrick alluded to the fact if you go to techshow.com, there is a PDF brochure. If at the very top you can click brochure and that’s like a PDF file that sometimes it’s a little bit easier to kind of look at all of the sessions there. And that’s what Patrick, I think was alluding to and like being able to circle the sessions. And then again, I would just reemphasize, just like Patrick said, a lot of people come to tech show knowing that they specifically want to go and talk to these vendors, right?

Because they’ve heard about them or they want to see it in action or they want to ask very specific questions, but they don’t want to do a phone call like when they’re office. They’re there at tech show away from the office because they know that they’ve got time. And if you go to techshow.com, there’s an expo hall floor plan and it will show you exactly what booth number that these companies will be at. And so you can plan your trajectory, right? Exactly where you want to walk and plan exactly when you want to go and talk to those folks. And we’ve scheduled Expo Hall breaks in between throughout the day, obviously, and they’re usually about an hour long. We even have lunch and learn sessions, so that’s a great time. That’ll all be in Expo Hall so that you’ll have plenty of time to make sure you go around and talk to those folks.

And even if you don’t have enough time to talk with them because you want to see several folks, a lot of times you can exchange a business card or LinkedIn profile and at least have somebody you can talk to at a later time. A lot of our exhibitors that come always appreciate the fact that over the next several weeks, they have times that they can set up for demo calls and things. So I know it’s not a whole lot different than what Patrick was saying, but again, we’re giving this advice based on what we’ve heard all the years that people find is so helpful is to have just a little bit of that planning component in there, know before you go a little bit.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. And then finally, I guess finally for this scenario, and let me go to Patrick for this one. Let’s say I’m a regular, I know a lot of people there, maybe I’m not like you guys knowing everybody, but I know a lot of people at the show, they know me. I have a lot of technology in my practice and maybe I even speak on some panels and whatnot. How would you then suggest that I plan my schedule to get stuff out of the show? Because you would think people like that, they probably know everything they don’t need to be told or they don’t need to learn anything, but there are still things that they can get out of the show, right?

Patrick Wright:

Oh my God. Yeah. So the thing that you have to think is, is that even … I saw someone the other day posted on X that in order to keep up with AI, you had to be unemployed. And so I thought even with us that are in the space that read way too much, get way too many newsletters, even us, it’s hard to keep up with it all. So I think this, I always say there’s the show within the show, within the show. Some of the show is going to the sessions. Some of the show is going to the dinners. Some of the show is going to the floor to see all these amazing vendors and their new changes. And then some of it is just meeting those people that you already know and catching up and then in those discussions, they’re going to say, “Are you using this?

Have you seen this? Have you gone over to this booth and checked these people out? ” And so that happens now in almost every single show. And I learned stuff from just the other attendees that have been regular attendees that have been going there that frankly, if you like talking about this stuff, it’s kind of a little heaven, like going to heaven for a couple of days because you’re just like immersed in all this great stuff and you’re hanging out with your friends. I just think that now I try to make it every year early in the early days as a practitioner, a really small firm, then I had this plan of doing every other year because my deal was, oh, technology, think about this, how crazy this is. Oh, technology’s not changing that fast. The software is not going to be that different from year to year.

Think about that. But now we look at it and I’m like, “Oh, it’s changing so fast.” I think that if you look at a lot of the stuff from now, there’s so many changes in the last 12 months that I just think that, I mean, it’s almost like you’re rolling over a different part of the show every time. So it’s pretty easy to say even if you’ve been there a lot, there’s new stuff there.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. And then finally, obviously tech shows fun. A lot of fun things to do. And this question for both of you, what are some things that you’re looking forward to as far as like either dinners or events or receptions? What are some things that you guys are looking forward to?

Brett Burney:

Yeah. Again, the networking, just exactly what Patrick was saying there. Even if I know that I’m going to see folks, just exactly what he said. “Hey, so last time we talked, you were doing this or you were trying this tool out. How did that go? And what are you trying now? What are you looking at now? “Things like that to me are just gold. I mean, it’s seeing good friends, but not even that, but I love to talk to folks that maybe have never attended tech show or maybe they attended eight years ago or something. And just to see the wide-eyed looks on their face like, ” Wow, I didn’t even know this was here. Did you know that this company was providing this platform that’s just going to make it easier? “Or my favorite above all is, ” Hey, I attended this Microsoft Word session with Baron Henley, who was fantastic at teaching that.

I had no idea that Word could do this. You can’t believe this is going to change my life in the next week when I go back. “To me, that literally warms my heart just to hear folks that come and attend and to get sort of that feedback. And then again, just the sessions, again, like Patrick said, I’m looking forward to that Saturday after the ABA presidents are there. We actually have a judge we’ve invited back to give his perspective on AI and he came up with, I thought was one of the best sessions I’m looking forward to. It’s called Every Brief You Make, I’ll be Watching You, a judge’s reflection on recent AI developments. So it’s just things like that. Victor, just like you said, it’s fun. I mean, we have fun knowing that we’re going to have practical takeaways, knowing that we are enabling folks with the right tools, the right knowledge.

It’s overwhelming. It is. The technology right now, it’s overwhelming. It’s scary, but it’s not avoidable. This is the world in which we practice today and having a place like this where you can kind of come together as a community, talk to others, hear what other people are doing, that just becomes the most valuable thing that you can take back to your practice.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. How about you, Patrick? What are you looking forward to?

Patrick Wright:

I think that in our discussions with, I want to say the presidents, just because it sounds more official of the ABA. I think I was talking to Michelle Binkey about the recent Forbes article about the number of jobs that AI is going to take. And it’s always between 50 and 60% in most articles. And I think that her comment was really, really important. She goes, “You talk about those percentages, but it’s going to affect 100% of the people in the industry, 100%.” And so because of that, going to these conferences, talking about it, learning about it, seeing it, this training that we’re all supposed to be doing, it becomes even doubly important to stay proficient from an ethics standpoint. And then also from a practitioner standpoint, a business owner, it’s very important. So my takeaway is just by showing up, you’re taking a step forward in the direction that you need to do.

So part of it showing up, and then the second thing is showing up at the conference and then actually going to attend these shows. I want to hit on one thing that we haven’t mentioned. One of probably my favorite parts of the show, which is the 60 and 60 that’s the last on Saturday. And Victor, you’re probably familiar with that, but the-

Brett Burney:

Yeah, he covers it. You’ve written on it several times, Victor. You

Patrick Wright:

Always

Brett Burney:

Do a great job covering

Patrick Wright:

It. I mean, it’s just no pressure. And so no pressure for Brett and I. But I’m just saying that is actually … I mean, go to the show, come see everything, right? I mean, I would go spend the money just to go to the 60 and 60, but that’s just me. But I’m just saying, yeah, because I like that so much and it’s just always just a ton of fun. So I don’t want to forget.That’s a really fun part of the show too.

Victor Li:

Gotcha. And the most important part for me now, are there going to be puppies there this year or no?

Brett Burney:

Puppies? Yes. Yes.

Victor Li:

Excellent.

Brett Burney:

T-shirts, you can look for that. Come in your finest spandex and capes, whatever you need, your masks, whatever you come to for Comic-Con. Come for the Comic-Con, stay for the technology. It’s going to be … I mean, again, don’t take this the wrong way. We have fun because this is part of what we have to do. We want to help everyone navigate it as best as possible, as you can tell. We’re just passionate about this, but yeah, it’s going to be fun and puppies will be there.

Victor Li:

Excellent. Excellent. And so just to make sure everyone knows, tech show will take place from March 25th to March 28th at McCormick Place in Chicago. Anyway, so to wrap up, if our listeners want to get in touch with you to talk about tech show or other things related to technology, what’s the best way to do that?

Patrick Wright:

My email address, [email protected]. It’s T-H-E-W-R-I-G-H-T, Lawyers, that’s L-A-W-I-R-S.com. So email me and oh yeah, we’ll talk.

Victor Li:

And then how about you, Brett?

Brett Burney:

Yeah. Well, I would just say first and foremost, go to techshow.com. It’s just one word, just like it says. Somebody thought a long time ago to get that URL in place and it’s been our parking place for a long time, techshow.com. You can find out how to get access to any of us there. But if you wanted to email me directly, you’re welcome to email at [email protected], [email protected].

Victor Li:

Excellent. All right. Thanks again for joining us today. I appreciate it.

Brett Burney:

Thank you, Victor.

Patrick Wright:

Thank you,

Victor Li:

Victor. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please go to your favorite app and check out some other titles from Legal Talk Network. In the meantime, I’m Victor Lee and I’ll see you next time on the ABA Journal, Legal Rebels Podcast.

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