Legal Conferences Look for a Formula to Fight 'Zoom Fatigue'

"Legal conferences have already begun following the rest of working life online. But as organizations like Rocket Matter, Litera and even the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) all begin moving events to the internet, such conferences may test the theory that if you build it, they will come.

So far, so good. Earlier this month, Rocket Matter staged a virtual legal conference titled “Rocket Aid” that garnered 490 attendees and raised $22,250 for the United Way, Feeding America and Pro Bono Net. However, as big-name organizations like the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) start putting online events of their own on the calendar, there’s also a risk that virtual conference fatigue starts setting in sooner rather than later.
It doesn’t help that the shift to remote working finds many legal professionals already spending large segments of both their working and personal lives online, trapped in an endless series of video chats and virtual tete-a-tetes.

“I think there’s a fair amount of Zoom fatigue in the world right now. One person said to me the other day, ‘I’ve never been on so many useless video calls in my entire life,’” said Joy Heath Rush, CEO of ILTA.

While ILTACON 2020 remains scheduled for Nashville in August, ILTA has transformed its June 8 LegalSEC Summit into an entirely virtual conference. That arrives on the heels of a May webinar series that CLOC has scheduled in lieu of its 2020 Las Vegas Institute.

It’s not a competition of content so much as it is a search for a reason to be. Rush, for example, consulted a focus group of ILTA members and business partners to ask what they wanted from an online conference..."

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