Setting up Monday in Nashville is the 11th annual Clio Cloud Convention, a convention offered by the legal follow administration firm Clio that focuses on lawful tech, lawful innovation and the upcoming of lawful apply. It will be the premier ClioCon however, with 2,500 people attending in individual and one more 1,000 attending just about, for a complete attendance of 3,500.
Assuming I am not struck by lightning prior to Monday, I will be there, as I have been at every ClioCon considering the fact that the quite initial.
Owning continuously praised the conference yr immediately after year as the very best in legal tech, I was additional critical of last year’s ClioCon, composing following it ended that it experienced been a little bit off its A-recreation. Even supplied that, I however claimed then — and I however imagine now — that it is the ideal meeting on legal tech and authorized apply.
That stated, I was delighted to master in a discussion yesterday with CEO and founder Jack Newton that Clio has designed some improvements this yr and introduced some new characteristics that are built to address some of the fears lifted by myself and other individuals.
For a single: There will be maps!
Enable me demonstrate. Every two decades, ClioCon moves to a new location in a new city. Previous yr, for the initially time, it was in Nashville, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Conference Middle. Below is what I stated about the location last 12 months:
“The venue, the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Middle, is a sprawling, byzantine facility that appears to have been made by a crew influenced by the drawings of graphic artist MC Escher, with a confounding array of multi-degree crisscrossing walkways, soaring plant-filled atriums, escalators that lead to stairways, and an overall structure that experienced people today generally emotion shed.”
Evidently, Clio’s convention planners felt sorry for us missing wanderers. This calendar year, Newton explained, attendees will be specified maps — genuine physical maps. (Think about them collector’s products, Newton mentioned.) There will also be an improved conference app that will make it much easier for attendees to find their way all around, as properly as discover every other, and indicators through the location to help level the way for those people who are navigationally challenged.
A further challenge very last calendar year was an opening night time reception on the terrace exterior the Grand Ole Opry that flew in the encounter of Clio’s track record for throwing great get-togethers. This a person had significant logistical difficulties that remaining persons standing in limitless traces for foodstuff and drinks, uncertain about what even was taking place. (These who were being affected individual sufficient ended up at some point rewarded with a clearly show at the Opry that was, by all accounts, wonderful.)
While the reception is returning to that identical terrace this year, Newton reported last year’s issue was due to breakdowns in conversation concerning Clio’s team and the venue’s, and he confident me that “those communication traces are firmly reestablished.” Not only that, but he reported the Opry exhibit will be even improved, with stars he will not nevertheless identify, but who will provide a Canadian lilt to Nashville.
Networking Alternatives
In my feeling, very last year’s conference also lacked a specified group vibe that is hard to set one’s finger on but that you know when you truly feel it — a vibe that experienced consistently characterized prior ClioCons. My guess is that was partly attributable to the aforementioned sprawl of the location, and also partly to the point that we have been all still re-emerging from our Covid caves, a bit rusty and unsure in our social abilities.
Even nevertheless we are now a different 12 months farther taken off from the pandemic, Newton said that this year’s ClioCon is in search of to gas that vibe by introducing new approaches to endorse networking amongst attendees. For just one, there is a devoted networking monitor on the agenda, highlighting all of the conference’s networking options.
People alternatives will consist of open networking breaks for all attendees and “birds of a feather” networking events for discrete groups these as solo attorneys, family members lawyers, guidance staff, and bar leaders and affinity associates.
The meeting will also have much more zones set aside for just sitting and having informal conversations, Newton reported.
With its two-calendar year-for each-town cycle of convention scheduling, ClioCon is on a tick-tock timetable, Newton stated. The very first “tick” year generally calls for some modifying to the new venue. But the “tock” cycle, he reported, is usually the additional fascinating.
Newton is dedicated to making ClioCon a meeting that is more substantial than just Clio, he claimed. “We really want ClioCon to be an market convention and a conference about the foreseeable future of legal. We believe that Clio alone, as a know-how platform, is a very important basis for what the long run of legal seems to be like.”
To that finish, the meeting is designed to bring together not only authorized professionals who are Clio users, but also individuals who are not, facet-by-facet with an array of considered leaders, innovators and lawful tech vendors — all focused on improving the exercise of regulation.
“That’s really the magic we’re attempting to develop at ClioCon, which is a mix of the technological people today, the persons that construct item, the persons that have a eyesight of what the future of legal could look like, and day-to-working day practising legal professionals that want to get thrilled and re-energized about what legal can be about. That is the aspiration of the chemistry we’re seeking to develop with this meeting.”
I hope to see you there!