Legal trade shows are still drawing in the crowds

Over the last few years, an obvious pattern that has evolved at the Legal IT Business Conference trade show is the emergence, and one suspects soon to be dominance, of cloud-based IT offerings. Many vendors' products are wholly cloud based, and software suppliers are either converting their offerings to this method of delivery or planning to do so. There has been a clear increase in vendors offering online storage, backup and infrastructure solutions, and a marked reduction in suppliers offering on-premise solutions.

If you have attended this show over the years, you will have noticed that, in general terms, the show seems to diminish in size and in footfall each time. There are probably a number of factors that have contributed to this.

Over the last four or five years, a sizeable number of suppliers have been bought out by a handful of bigger entities, the result of which is a diminishing number of legal IT vendors. As a result, we see smaller trade shows. This shrinking of the legal IT market is a reflection of what is happening elsewhere in the world. There is less variety in terms of shops and manufacturers and the legal market has not escaped this trend.

Some bemoan this kind of contraction in the market. Less competition means less choice of course, but it also means that some of the more esoteric and rather less useful software packages that have clung on to life for too long are eradicated, which in some sense guarantees that a minimum decent standard of software will prevail.

There are other reasons for smaller trade shows, and economics is more than likely among them. Trade shows cost money, and, in a world of ever-decreasing margins, it may be one expense that vendors don't think is worth expending. More cynical observers suggest that vendors do not make sales at trade shows these days, and so the return on their investment is not likely to happen.

While I understand that viewpoint, I don't agree that the shows are not worthwhile. They offer plenty of opportunities to undertake a bit of networking, meet colleagues and attend the panel sessions and speaker events that run throughout the day.

Attracting an audience

Aimed at the smaller firms and start-ups, Law 2012 happened to be on at Olympia the same week and I headed along there too. This event is a more compact affair but there were still a number of IT vendors exhibiting, as well as a wider range of services on offer.

One interesting aspect of this show is that they run seminars throughout the day on various topics, and these offer CPD points for attendees. It's a really clever way of giving lawyers the opportunity to collect the much-needed points, and vendors an opportunity to talk to their target audience. Now that various suppliers simply showcasing their wares is failing to draw in the crowds, this is a useful model for attracting delegates to increasingly quiet trade shows, and I suspect that it is a tactic that will be used more and more over the coming years. When I arrived at this show it seemed eerily quiet, but once the seminars were over there was a veritable stampede, providing plenty of opportunities for browsers and vendors alike.

Chance to network and learn

There are those who question the existence of the trade shows, especially in light of the quantity of information available on the web. But there is still nothing like seeing something in the flesh, as it were. It would be a shame if these showcases declined to the point of disappearance.

They are still useful for those wanting to see what's available in the world of legal software, and learn about industry trends. The opportunity to meet and greet your suppliers is always useful, and there are always plenty of educational sessions to bolster one's knowledge. Most of the exhibitors offer demonstrations of their offerings, so it's a chance for prospective purchasers to see a number of products without having to invite vendors to their offices, with all the attendant setup such as booking meeting rooms and so on.

Not all suppliers attend, so it's not a proper beauty parade in the sense that you might not find all the products in a particular field. And it is certainly not a place to vet sophisticated software like a practice management system, as you are only likely to see a small fraction of the facilities on offer. What you do get is the opportunity to check the look and feel of a product, and see it next to rival products. This is really useful for comparing offerings, especially as you can wander back and forth. Those of you who have been involved in choosing software will know that the longer the gap between vendor demonstrations, the harder it is to compare them to each other.