As the American Association of Law Libraries wrapped up its annual meeting in Boston previous thirty day period, I checked out of my resort and produced my way by the Prudential Centre browsing mall that connects the Hynes Conference Centre to the various inns that hosted the conference’s attendees.
As I handed a foods court docket, a girl putting on a meeting badge stopped me and asked what I assumed of the conference. In advance of I could even accumulate my feelings more than enough to remedy, she pointed to a nearby team of men and women, all from the meeting, and reported they experienced just been discussing it, and agreed it had been an “unconference.”
She did not imply that in the complimentary feeling of the fashionable little conferences with no agendas that are referred to as unconferences. She intended, she spelled out, that the convention never ever coalesced into what felt like a conference — into an celebration with a cohesive theme and obvious purpose.
Had she not beat me to the punch, I would specified her a similar solution, and I immediately agreed with the evaluation of her and the others in her team.
Actually, it the two pained and dissatisfied me to say that. In the previous, I have been a admirer of this conference. For example, in progress of previous year’s convention, I wrote:
“Often, when I listen to persons rattle off the names of the primary legal engineering conferences in the United States, this one particular is not even on their radar. That is a large mistake. Both of those in its plans and its exhibit hall, the AALL convention is one particular of the top conferences for anybody intrigued in authorized tech.”
This year, on the other hand, the conference seemed to absence the vitality of prior decades. It has taken me a couple months to coalesce my feelings on why that was, but I was spurred to produce this by my close friend Steve Embry’s put up yesterday at his TechLaw Crossroads weblog, Navigating the Evolving Authorized Landscape: The 2023 AALL Convention and the Courageous New Entire world.
As Steve notes, we had reviewed the conference on our Legaltech 7 days display and agreed that, as Steve put it, “this year’s show seemed a very little disjointed.”
No Centre of Gravity
Partly to blame, in my opinion, was the location. Given that I are living not much from Boston, I was happy to see it preferred as the host city. But, the moment at the conference, it quickly grew to become obvious that the Hynes/Prudential structure is not well suited for a smallish meeting these kinds of as this. The Hynes, itself, is cavernous, as convention facilities are wont to be, and so it requires heaps of going for walks as a result of empty spaces to get from right here to there, even however most of the true applications, once you reached them, ended up in a pretty compact space.
Beyond the convention center alone, conference-goers were being unfold throughout an assortment of inns. Even though all of these inns join to the Hynes and to each other as a result of the Prudential shopping mall, all have to have a hike to get from 1 to the other.
Even though the unfold-out format was superior for having one’s day-to-day methods in, its impact was that the meeting lacked a heart of gravity. There was no solitary area for convention-goers to congregate, these kinds of as a lobby bar or even just a central lobby. A person of the sights of attending an in-man or woman convention is the happenstance of who you may possibly operate into. But working into individuals from this conference was strike or miss, help you save for the scheduled receptions and displays.
Also the target of an regrettable layout was the exhibit hall. A broad concrete centre segment divided the hall into two pieces, with some exhibitors on a person facet, the relaxation on the other facet, all related by a very long slender corridor. Had this been a ginormous exhibition hall, that may possibly of worked, but supplied the fairly compact amount of exhibitors, around 60, this break up created each fifty percent really feel even scaled-down and much less cohesive.
A Time Of Uncertainty
So although one could blame the actual physical plant for the conference’s deficiency of vitality, I basically feel that was only a minor contributor. In reality, I really don’t imagine it was at all the fault of the convention organizers. Somewhat, I think it was a subject of regrettable timing, designed so by the sudden onslaught of generative AI inside the lawful career and the ensuing sense of uncertainty that so quite a few of us experience.
As a occupation, we instantly obtain ourselves betwixt and concerning a earlier we believed we realized and a long run we do not completely recognize. Unfortunately for the convention, it happened to land in the midst of that state of limbo.
In point, legislation librarians may be specifically susceptible to experience this uncertainty, as they confront the sudden arrival of a technology that few definitely realize and that some imagine could threaten their futures.
I mean, just a 7 days just before the meeting, a study arrived out from Wolters Kluwer and Higher than the Law in which a majority of legal gurus expressed the belief that generative AI puts librarians and others associated in know-how management and study at hazard of obsolescence.
I don’t imagine that for a next. In point, I’ve prepared about the increasingly essential role of the regulation librarian in the age of AI. “Never has the function of the authorized-data expert been far more necessary,” I wrote.
My good friend and co-panelist on Legaltech 7 days Jean O’Grady expressed a related perception: “I have read it all before,” she wrote. “For the previous 20 years the conclude of legislation librarians was imminent and nevertheless for people 20 years we have been at the forefront of introducing new systems.”
That stated, there was a palpable feeling of insecurity and uncertainty at the meeting. Law librarians have quite a few queries about what this new technologies is now, how it will evolve, and what it will indicate for their futures.
I have to think that the generative AI onslaught affected the conference even before it officially convened. No doubt, specified how lengthy in progress conferences are prepared, the AALL had to make adjustments in the plan to guarantee there were being panels concentrated on generative AI.
And though there ended up numerous panels with noteworthy professionals in generative AI, even a lot of of people seemed lackluster and to slide in that limbo of betwixt and amongst. Some of the speakers I saw gave what have been properly the exact talks I’d witnessed them give in advance of in other contexts, without having significantly adapting them to the viewers at hand. It was as if even they didn’t pretty know what much more to say about this technologies that hasn’t previously been explained.
(Probably the ideal panel I attended was the a single pictured higher than, “Hunting and Accumulating on the Authorized Details Savannah,” moderated by Susan Nevelow Mart, professor emeritus at the College of Colorado Regulation Faculty, with panelists from the four primary authorized study corporations, Joseph Breda, president of Bloomberg Legislation Brian Mismash, vice president of products tactic at Thomson Reuters Vijay Raman, vice president, look for and world-wide platforms, at LexisNexis and Edward Walters, main system officer of vLex.)
Seize the Opportunity
I know I am sounding completely negative about this conference, and I seriously do not mean to be. I was happy I went, and I absolutely will return subsequent year (if they’ll have me).
But I imagine the convention experienced from this second in time in which it occurred — a moment when so numerous of us have so several concerns and when the answers to those people questions stay so unclear.
I fully feel what I said over: Hardly ever has the role of the legal-info skilled been extra critical. But I also imagine that lots of of the people who came to this convention had been not so persuaded of that.
In the stop, the serious takeaway from this conference really should be that the law library profession needs to shift beyond the uncertainty and seize this opportunity to outline and exhibit the vital part it stands to play in the progress of generative AI within the legal profession.
As a occupation, we are at a crossroads, heading into unsure terrain, and handful of are improved suited to enable us uncover our way than legislation librarians.
