Legal Commentary

One of the most challenging tasks of conference organizers is finding the right keynote speaker to spark plug an event. This choice is especially difficult for conventions such as ILTA or LegalTech New York, where the audience has a huge bandwidth of experience, from absolute novice to jaded veteran.

How do you find the right person who will engage your attendees and provide both substance and buzz, setting just the right tone and energy for your event?  What works best to motivate the crowd: fear? humor? How do you avoid alienating or intimidating your audience? Do you go for empty but enjoyable calories, or provide the protein that will carry the listeners through the subsequent days of the meeting? How do you find a speaker that won't break the budget (good speakers are not cheap). How do you create "sustainable sizzle," -- content that doesn't evaporate as quickly as the crisp fire of sparklers on a dark July night?

After ILTA's opening keynote, many attendees discussed those questions with the fury of a high school debate team. Jason Jennings is a "motivational" speaker and author of several business books, including Think Big, Act Small, and Hit the Ground Running. His keynote was titled, "Five Secrets to Put 'Strategic Unity' on the Fast Track," incorporating ILTA's meeting theme.

Jennings' keynote polarized the ITLA audience, generating intense praise from some attendees and strong applause; yet sarcastic mocking from others who argued that he was simply putting ILTA lipstick on a canned speech about obvious business principals. One enthusiast from a major firm said he was so inspired he furiously wrote five pages of notes; another mid-career attendee was so irritated with Jennings' simplicity (and religious undertones) that she walked out.

Jennings focused his talk on five companies whose leaders he had interviewed and operating models he admired, among them, Smuckers and Staples. He concludes that the prime keys to business legal success involves creating work environments 1) with a common "noble" purpose, 2) where teams can "let go" of failing projects, 3) where employees treat the company as if it were their own (and are empowered to do so), and 4) where owners take a "stewardship" approach to the company, recognizing that it doesn't really "belong" to them. I'm forgetting the fifth component of success, but you get the drift.

The messages of Jennings' talk could be pretty much summed up by comparing it to a formulaic television show that I sheepishly admit I often like: Undercover Boss. That's a CBS show where the top dog of a company goes "undercover" and pretends to be a new employee for a week. (Believe it or not, the episode featuring the boss of Hooters was fascinating, particularly addressing the company's reputation of unbridled sexism).

After the keynote, six of us intensely evaluated Jennings and his content.  George Rudoy, of Shearman & Sterling, posed a question to the group:  Where we more influenced in our reaction by   the content of the keynote, or Jenning's style of delivering the content? (The naysayers felt that Jennings was way too self-promoting, and cloying, complete with an artificial trick at the end to generate a fake standing ovation. (Think George Clooney in Up in the Air).

But the advocates argued that Jennings was mesmerizing, and that they devoured his insights into leadership tactics and planned to apply them immediately at their worksites.

Ultimately, when you think about what makes a good keynote, doesn't it all come down to, "Did this speaker give me one good idea that I can implement in my own shop."  If the answer is yes, my time has not been wasted (although poor keynotes are proof positive why I am so happy that BlackBerrys have BrickBreaker on them). Personally, the  idea that resonated with me was the idea of "letting go" of projects that have run their course, and instead turning more attention to new opportunities.

And I quickly concede that Jennings fulfilled his duties because more than half the attendees (who, at ILTA, range from IT, to finance, HR, attorneys, paralegals, etc.) appreciated his presentation.

And I will remember the presentation, mostly because I now know that I will be able to crack up Rudoy by simple evoking Stuart Smalley ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"). But I'm wicked, and you all know that. :)

Bottom line: the best keynotes keep you talking for years. They are, as some marketing folks call it, "sticky." People are still talking about Malcolm Gladwell at LegalTech New York 2010, and former CIA dude who so scared the daylights out of everybody talking about identity theft that we all wanted to race to our banks and take out all our money and put it under our mattress.

Of course, the literally-stickiest keynote in years had to be the fabulous keynote at ILTA a few years back, by astronaut James Lovell, who wisely suggested that the secret of success in life is duct tape.