ICBI's first year of running Legal IT Show proves to be a major success

The 8th annual Legal IT Show was attended by 1292 exhibitors, visitors, speakers and delegates. This cemented its position as the leading legal IT show in Europe. Pre-registration numbers were broadly comparable to last year, which was encouraging given the current economic malaise. A large number of law firm IT Managers and IT Directors braved the snow to attend, but it was clear that the adverse weather had some impact on final numbers. Exhibitors reported a steady stream of business, with several reporting that they closed significant business on their stands.

There were many newly introduced features over the two consecutive days of activity including new product launches, keynote sessions at speakers' corner, round table sessions and of course the first ever Legal IT Show Conference. The conference, consisting of seminars from prestigious industry experts, helped the show to further cement its industry standing.

"We would like to thank everyone who braved the snow and helped to make the Legal IT Show 2009 such a success," stated Matthew Robinson of ICBI.

A number of new products and developments were launched at Legal IT 2009 with 60 companies exhibiting over the two-day event.

Eleanor Howell, Marketing Manager of DPS Software, was on hand to show visitors the innovative new software. Eleanor commented, "For us, the Legal IT Show is the only show worth exhibiting at. All of our sales team have been busy throughout the day. Legal IT is a great forum to launch a new product or service as all the industry leaders attend the event."

This year's event also housed pavilions from Lexis Nexis, Iris, DPS Software, DGH and Autonomy to name but a few.

Barbara Millett, Marketing Manager from Iris echoed this sentiment: "Legal IT Show has been an excellent opportunity for us to highlight our software and services to the legal profession. We have been busy and are very pleased with the steady flow of visitors, especially considering the weather and economic climate, and have definitely created some strong leads today."

Legal IT Show Conference
The first ever Legal IT Show Conference allowed delegates to discuss key topics including how existing technology can be employed to cut costs and streamline business processes, and outsourcing IT for law firms.

The conference featured presentations from industry experts including Ian Lauwerys of Kennedy's with a case study on virtualisation, Brendan O'Brien and Murray Fraser of Breeze Plus on the quest for the paperless office, and Neil Boddy and Richard Brownlee of Minster Law on aligning technology with an aggressive growth strategy.

The new keynote sessions at speakers' corner proved very successful with addresses from Paul Lippe, Co-Founder of Legal Onramp, Julian Chain, Partner & Co-Founder H4 Partners, James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting & Innovation at De Montfort University and Gerald Ratner, Founder of Gerald Online.

Covering a wide variety of topics from the future of the law firm, how technology is changing our world, and recovering from a business and personal disaster, the keynote sessions had something for everyone.

One of the key features of this year's event was the new round table sessions, which were open to all visitors and offered the opportunity to share knowledge and experience, whilst also providing a fantastic opportunity to network with peers. Each session was hosted by a recognized expert and focused on the very latest issues impacting law firms of all sizes.

John Barton, IT Manager at Matheson Ormsby Prentice gave his thoughts on this year’s event: "I came to the Legal IT Show because I had heard about it but never been. It has been good to meet all the exhibitors and I've found it highly informative and in particular found the speakers very interesting."

Plans are already underway for Legal IT Show 2010, which will once again be held at the Business Design Centre in London from 10 -11 February 2010. With many companies taking the opportunity to re-book their stands for 2010 during this year's event, anyone looking to exhibit next year is encouraged to contact Matthew Robinson ICBI on 020 7017 5755 sooner rather than later.