Wednesday, February 4, 2009

London LegalIT Show 2009

We're not sure if it was the unexpected snow, the depressing economic climate and resulting tight budgets, or indeed the perceived value and/or quality of the event by potential law firm representative attendees, but this year's LegalIT exhibit in London was (in our opinion) more than a slight disappointment.

We feel for those vendors who booked their stands in February of last year when things were a little more rosey...and even more sorry for them when they realised today that the only people visiting their stands were vendors from the other stands who had nothing better to do.

Although 2010's dates are already set in stone, we would not be surprised if this event slips off the radar by then when the vendors do the math from this year's investment in this type of format and approach.

The event's reputation has suffered in recent years, with few senior management level personnel from London firms making the trip to Islington to walk the floors and attend the presentations.

The format works better in New York for the 'real' LegalTech primarily because of the scale of the legal market and the large number of mid and small tier firms that attend each year from multiple locations - in fact there were over 260 exhibitors in New York in comparison to the 50 scraped together in London.

Time for a new team and a fresh approach to these things we think...unless tomorrow's final day shows significant improvement.

No comments: