Legal Research

ABA TECHSHOW 2011

By David Bilinsky

? My kind of town.
Chicago is my kind of town.
Chicago is my kind of razzmatazz
And it has all that jazz…?

Lyrics and music by: Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, recorded by Frank Sinatra.

We are now just under a month away from the American Bar Association’s TECHSHOW, to be held in Chicago, Illinois from Monday April 11 to Wednesday April 13. These three days will be packed with all sorts of legal technology, training, sessions and presentations. Techshow is really composed of three parts: (1) Over 50 educational sessions spread over 18 tracks, (2) The exhibit hall which features over 100 exhibitors and (3) the social networking component which allows you to meet with hundreds of other lawyers, law firm administrators, legal application developers, consultants and others at the conference, at social events and at the “Taste of Techshow” themed dutch-treat dinners.

Is there content that would entice a Canadian lawyer to attend? By and large law office technology and management is the same whether you are north or south of the 49th parallel. Our American cousins host an incredible conference – and at least for British Columbia lawyers, TECHSHOW counts as professional development credit. Canadians have long had a hand in Techshow – there have been at least 4 Canadian lawyers who have chaired ABA TECHSHOW and many many more have been speakers and Techshow planning board members. By my count, there are at least 5 Canadian speakers at the 2011 conference.

This year’s conference marks the 25th Anniversary of TECHSHOW. As such there are special events planned to honour this silver jubilee! Along with cutting edge sessions (such as iPads for Lawyers), there are solid sessions such as:

The Inbox Ninjas Ride Again: Time-Saving Tools and Tips to Chop Through Your Inbox

and

Logistics of Going Paperless.

Techshow offers so much content that typically, every attendee comes away with ‘information overload’ and oftentimes the hardest task is prioritizing the new ideas and things that you want to try in your office to make it more efficient, effective and productive. After all, TECHSHOW has all that jazz….and my kind of razzmatazz…

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 15, 2011 (boomark / email).