Ari Kaplan, a authorized trade analyst and the host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, just lately spoke with the next leaders on the 2026 Worldwide Authorized Know-how Affiliation Annual Convention for his annual mixtape.
Ari Kaplan: What are you wanting ahead to at ILTACON 2026?
Ross Guberman, founder and CEO, BriefCatch: We’re exhibiting, however I’m actually wanting ahead to wandering round and seeing what’s coming. It’s arduous to know the place the entire authorized tech trade is headed, however I want to determine it out this week. I seen yesterday that there are a number of new gamers within the exhibit corridor, and I’m wanting to see what they’re as much as and whether or not it alerts any shift in the place merchandise are headed. We’ve been a deterministic product for essentially the most half till just a few years in the past, after we moved into generative AI. What’s thrilling now’s discovering the candy spot between the 2 and determining the fitting workflow and structure to learn from some great benefits of code and AI.
Ari Kaplan: How has AI remodeled your small business and the enterprise of your shoppers?
Anthony Seale, founder and CEO, Legatics: We’ve been attempting to undertake AI internally. I met some individuals who had been experimenting with MCPs very early, and I really went on a weekend retreat to Scotland with them. We had to make use of a code growth atmosphere, an IDE, to do this approach of working. It was the primary time I’d used AI to hook up with all of my completely different instruments. I linked it to my calendar, Salesforce and the instruments we use internally to run a authorized expertise firm. Quickly, that grew to become a mannequin for the way legal professionals might work. So now we’re bringing Legatics, as a central supply of reality for transactions through an MCP, into our shoppers’ world. It brings a really fluid, cross-platform approach of working, with AI on the heart. Working on this approach has utterly remodeled how I work and my life. However I don’t suppose legal professionals are fairly there but. They’re on the cusp, and I’m excited to deliver that to the world.
Ari Kaplan. (Picture by Tori Soper)
Ari Kaplan: What are your expectations for this yr’s ILTA convention?
Beau Wysong, chief advertising and marketing officer, Opus 2: ILTACON has been completely different this yr. It feels prefer it’s grown to a scale a lot larger than in years previous. There’s a greater diversity of attendees throughout the ecosystem, and the exhibit corridor has actually taken off. So it’s about staying related within the trade and ensuring our message as a enterprise associate might be heard, even with all of the noise. The most important driver of change, clearly, has been expertise. Two years in the past, AI was a cool concept, and that rapidly grew to become a actuality final yr. It’s exploded this yr by means of use circumstances, and it’s grown bigger in two years than anybody might have imagined. It’s turn out to be actual. Because of this, everybody’s attempting to maintain up and ensure we’re utilizing it as successfully as potential. We launched Opus 2 Ingenuity, our agentic AI framework. It’s the fruits of a number of work to impress all of the AI we’ve had out out there earlier than, and we’re excited to share it.
Ari Kaplan: What questions are you hoping to reply for shoppers and prospects at this yr’s occasion?
Beth Thompson, vice chairman of market technique and authorized evangelism, Actionstep: AI is high of thoughts for everybody proper now, simply at completely different ranges of curiosity. I’m fascinated by understanding the place individuals are in that journey. Have they taken the plunge? Are they contemplating it within the subsequent 12 months? What are they nervous about? ILTACON is the proper discussion board to information them by means of choices and present them tips on how to run their corporations extra effectively. I’ve been coming to the convention for years, and it’s nonetheless the perfect week of the yr. The vitality is unimaginable, and also you’re surrounded by good individuals you be taught from continuously. It’s the one time of yr we will set competitors apart and simply work collectively to push the authorized tech trade ahead.
Ari Kaplan: What are you attempting to convey at this yr’s ILTA convention?
Dan Malgran, vice chairman of selling, Steno: After we take a look at how we market to legal professionals, to information administration and to legislation corporations on the whole, we take into consideration the people first. Many firms market B2B and consider it because the agency shopping for this or the agency’s character shopping for this. We see it extra as the person making the choice, and folks like to attach with others. They prefer to be wowed, amazed by various things. So after we heard that the theme general for ILTACON this yr was musicals, we went forwards and backwards. We now have a really inventive workforce. We now have a discipline workforce. We now have a model workforce. We went forwards and backwards on a few completely different concepts and finally settled on Legally Blonde. That morphed into the “What? Like, it’s arduous?” So all throughout our social, we’re operating, “What, like, litigation help is difficult?” “What, like, depositions are arduous?” And we’re additionally feeding into the schooling round why we all know that house and the way we make that simpler for individuals to make their jobs simpler and to grasp their workflows. We’ve even discovered that simply by stepping into on the theme, so many individuals are coming as much as the sales space, and so they’re wowed. It has a special appear and feel from every little thing else on the ground.
Ari Kaplan: What do you consider your first ILTA convention?
Eileen Penta, senior account government, Clarra: It’s actually superb to be in a room with so many educated individuals at a time of fast change in authorized expertise. I’ve caught up with so many associates and made new ones. Everyone seems to be right here and receptive to dialog, and everybody’s studying in actual time. With this expertise increase, each agency is utilizing a call tree to decide on which expertise to undertake, tips on how to strategy it, and tips on how to be taught data governance to make their litigation course of simpler. Everyone seems to be opening their eyes to what’s obtainable proper now, and it’s an unimaginable time to be a part of it. I’ve a background as a trial paralegal in New York Metropolis, and seeing the instruments you may have now versus then is mind-blowing.
Ari Kaplan: What do you consider this yr’s ILTA convention?
Religion Benson, vice chairman of selling, SimplyAgree: It looks like authorized tech has actually arrived. I come from a conventional SaaS background, and once I began in authorized tech, every little thing felt like we had been catching as much as what was occurring within the valley. Now, it feels just like the valley has arrived in authorized tech. It’s thrilling to listen to from prospects how they’re every approaching this new world and to consider how the ecosystem connects. That’s been a extremely optimistic growth during the last yr with the adoption of horizontal AI. It’s put everyone in an ecosystem mindset, quite than a shelf of separate instruments they faucet into for various issues. SimplyAgree’s based mostly right here in Nashville, so my workforce will get to decide on some actually superior native spots to deliver our prospects and associates.
Ari Kaplan: What are your expectations for this yr’s ILTA convention?
Gabriel Karawani, co-founder, ClearPeople: My expectations are to satisfy plenty of prospects, prospects and companions and to have conversations concerning the craziness that’s authorized tech as we speak. Simply on the aircraft on the way in which over right here, we had half a aircraft filled with U.Okay. authorized tech leaders, and conversations had been occurring all through. All of us really feel there’s an enormous alternative to unravel issues which have been in entrance of us for the final 10, 20, 30 years. Lots of people really feel that that is the time to unravel them, however on the identical time, we’re nonetheless carrying among the previous burdens, among the previous legacies, and among the conventional system issues. Earlier than we do, we will’t leapfrog forward with the most recent expertise.
Ari Kaplan: What questions are you receiving at your sales space this yr?
Ginger Shimp, vice chairman of selling, Fulcrum World Applied sciences: In fact, everyone’s speaking about AI, and it’s most likely the toughest query to reply as a result of everyone additionally has a solution. However our focus is that AI will amplify what you do badly as a lot as it should amplify what you do nicely. So the human within the loop is central to what our firm is constructed on. Our CEO, Ahmed Shaaban, stated you may both handle AI strategically or reactively, and we’re right here to assist our prospects handle it strategically.
Ari Kaplan: What was your imaginative and prescient for this yr’s ILTA convention, and has it come to fruition?
Pleasure Heath Rush, CEO, Worldwide Authorized Know-how Affiliation: Effectively, I’ll inform you, Ari, every little thing is altering so quickly. Any imaginative and prescient greater than 4 weeks prematurely might be already outdated. Primarily based on our early registrations and sponsorships, we noticed the group excited to be collectively on this time of unimaginable change. Two years in the past, the conversations had been, “Ought to we?” Final yr, the conversations had been, “Right here’s how.” Now, the conversations are, “What’s subsequent?” And by way of the main focus, our buddy Jim McKenna says, “What’s subsequent after what’s subsequent?” That’s what I hoped for, and I feel now we have undoubtedly seen it.
Hearken to the whole interview at Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan recurrently interviews leaders within the authorized trade and within the broader skilled providers group to share perspective, spotlight transformative change and introduce new expertise at his blog and on Apple Podcasts.