Strategies to maximize the value of attending ILTACON 2022

Welcome to Legal Tech Matters, a Litera podcast dedicated to creating conversations about trends, technology, and innovation for modern law firms and companies big and small.

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Ari Kaplan

Welcome to this edition of Reinventing Legal. I'm Ari Kaplan, and I have the honor of speaking today with Sherry Kappel, an Evangelist at Litera. Hi, Sherry. How are you?

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Sherry Kappel

I am great, Ari. Thank you for having me on.

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Ari Kaplan

I'm looking forward to this conversation, Sherry. Tell us about your background and your various roles at Litera over the years.

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Sherry Kappel

Well, my background is that I studied to be a journalist, an investigative reporter. I really think I still do that. But in any event, what happened to me is that I was a writer, a journalist at the time when the technology time, when we had such transformation in that, you know, at the beginning it was a typewriter. And by the end, we actually had computers we all worked on.

And what happened to me. Honestly, I was completely seduced by the technology. I loved the tool that I was using and pretty soon that became more important to me for launching my career than actually being a journalist. Although I again count myself as a journalist of a different kind. I began as a technical writer for a software company that made a word processing package, and that company was the original Microsystems. So there you go, that's my background.

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Ari Kaplan

What is the role of an Evangelist?

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Sherry Kappel

So, an Evangelist really helps people envision whatever comes next. So, think of it as a sort of recipe between one with ingredients that are change management and certainly persuasion and also just enlightening people and educating people on, you know, from what they know to what it is they need to know for what is next. I've been involved in, so I've been so privileged to be involved in so many change challenges, change events, improvements across the legal community for the last couple of decades and years.

But it's really about telling the story and it's really about helping them visualize the end goal.

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Ari Kaplan

You've been with Microsystems and all the way through to Litera since 1984 with a few brief breaks. What's the secret to such dynamic longevity with a single organization?

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Sherry Kappel

I would say at different phases Ari it's been different things, but at the core of it, it's really helping customers. You know, some of these technology changes, some of them have been just catapults over the years. And I would say helping the customers, having empathy for the problems and the challenges and the things that just really take their life away in terms of time and just helping them with technology make it all better.

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Ari Kaplan

What do the various positions you've held at the company have in common?

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Sherry Kappel

I think it's really, it's invention. Whether that invention is a piece of software or whether it is a new service or whether it is a new offering or whether it is putting three things together that no one really saw as connected but I really feel that every single role I have had, it's an event or a task or a project.

It's always starting from a bit of a blank page. So, for me, that's it. It's, it's literally that's it. Maybe that's actually the wow. Ari, I hadn't thought of it this way, but literally everything I've done has started from a blank page.

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Ari Kaplan

When I was looking through your impressive career, I was thinking that the skill of being able to create and adapt and evolve has become top of mind for legal professionals. But you started doing it almost four decades ago.

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Sherry Kappel

Yeah, I and it's so funny you know, the phrase of the difference between a digital native, right. And whatever the opposite is. But I feel like I was a digital native before it was digital because it was just natural. And I don't know if it's just curiosity. I don't know exactly what it is. But I do know central to it for me is being driven by a customer or a friend or a family member, you know, who needs help.

And so again, and there's just been such evolution in as far as technology goes that you can't be bored. And in fact, you know, those little brief breaks you talked about, the only reason that there were those breaks is because at some point I must have gotten bored. And then I went on to do something where it wouldn't be you know; it'd be something different.

So, like I said, I really love the I love I think every technologist really has that same thing. Right? They do have a sense of improving things and of making things new and helping.

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Ari Kaplan

What have you seen as the most prominent changes in legal since you began working in the profession?

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Sherry Kappel

So, at the very beginning, you had to be an expert in anything that took content from, you know, a written handwritten page or from a typewritten page to making it into something that could be manipulated for various purposes, whether that was a web site or whether that was an article you were publishing in a magazine or whatever. So, what's so fascinating to me, and frankly, it's welcoming to me, is to see the lawyers now with technology having gotten so much more ubiquitous and it isn't so elitist anymore.

Right. I just love that the number of users, the number of individuals, whether they be lawyers or their support staff, taking advantage of technology, taking advantage especially of authoring technologies to do their work. Because, again, before there had to be like three different rolls of individuals who could get them from again. And whatever it was they inserted in their minds to, you know, getting it on paper and getting it to be a deliverable for someone.

And I just love that all of that is behind us. And I equally love that there are so many more, so many more lawyers that are working in that capacity. In fact, I don't know. Ari have you ever heard of the LTC4?

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Ari Kaplan

Of course, of course. I've done several podcasts about them. Yeah.

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Sherry Kappel

Fantastic. So, one of the things that I had the privilege of working on was a consortium of folks during the height of the pandemic. We did something we called the Effectiveness Project because what we realized is that while lawyers might know how to, you know, the coming out of law school, they might know how to use a kind of Google Docs collaborating environment.

They don't really know the professional use of Word. And so, we put together the Effectiveness Project to basically share with more people how you really, really wield that tool. And so again, it's to me an example of the various things that we're able to do now to bring more people into content generation and all of the things that go around it.

It's, it's digitally. It's pretty involved. And, and I'm just so happy there's more people in it.

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Ari Kaplan

Speaking of bringing people together, what community organizations have been most impactful in your career in terms of learning about trends and collaborating with industry peers?

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Sherry Kappel

Okay. So, collaborating the category I'd put there is the LTC4 Project Imagine, you know, 20 people all working to craft this, this, this one document called the Effectiveness Project. So LTC4 I would throw that up there in the in you know as well as several others. So, I would add ILTA, International Legal Technology Association is just really central to everything I've done working with this community.

I would also credit the Professional Legal Trainers' Group for them. They are based in New York. Every year I have the privilege of speaking to them in September. It's kind of like the going back to school session and I've learned so much from them about communicating to people and teaching people and all of the tools and all of the trends.

And of course, they are a community of presenters really when you boil it down and I get so many great insights from them. The other one is the Document Excellence Group, which was a kind of originally a UK-based group and now it is international. We brought the New York what had been the Word Legal Users' Group. We'd brought that together with the DEG and that organization, honestly, Ari, if you ever want to meet an incredibly accomplished global group of individuals, who know how it is done in terms of content production in a law firm. Oh, my goodness. It's just like sitting in a master class, just having a conversation with everyone. They're so totally a document geek's paradise to work with them.

So those are the agencies that I've learned most often. I would say obviously also my colleagues, you know, they're amazing. And so, it's just a great community.

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Ari Kaplan

Only on reinventing legal do we talk about a document geek's paradise.

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Sherry Kappel

Yes of course only there.

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Ari Kaplan

With the 2022 ILTACON coming up I'm curious when did you attend your first ILTA conference.

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Sherry Kappel

Oh, it was 1997. 1997 and I think it was not even called ILTA then. I think it was called LawNet back then and it was equally that year that I spoke on basically that the transition from WordPerfect into Microsoft Word and you know, hey this was crowd generating, there were so many people had so many questions so oh and it was so funny to our guests.

Guess what, we, we were asked our, our company was asked to help because we were a Microsoft partner, even all the way back then still are to this day, but we were asked by Microsoft to man their booth and it was it was such so funny because you know you would have people coming up and asking you questions about Windows 3.1.

Anyway, yes, we manned the Microsoft both, this is a claim to fame.

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Ari Kaplan

So, what we're beyond this transition from WordPerfect to Word. What were some other key issues that were discussed during that time?

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Sherry Kappel

Oh, my goodness.

It was learning and training. So again, because there was such a dramatic change, you know, again, we all take for granted our authoring technologies and tools when you kind of rip something away that that was so foundational in a firm from the time that they went from a mechanized typewriter to, you know, digitally producing content such as Word Perfect.

It's like second nature, you know, you know, where everything is, you know, how to do and achieve everything. And so literally, it was entirely about project planning, such a transition how you were going to get all your documents into the right format and all of the training and learning and orchestration that was required. So much about floor support, but that was really the big thing, honestly, moving to Windows.

And yes, one other big, huge thing was how to use a mouse, how to use a mouse, how to teach using a mouse.

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Ari Kaplan

What was the biggest challenge with that?

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Sherry Kappel

You know, it's just that again, we'd all been so formed by, think of it as more of the more mechanical approaches to things so when you have a device, a pointing a device like a mouse, it's just I remember that one of the leaders in a law firm who had been kind of like a champion of this technology change called us into her office, but only a couple of people and held the mouse, you know, in her hand and said, I'm sorry, I do not understand how to use this thing.

And so, she and so we said, well, we'll show us what you do. So, she flips it over and she starts rolling the roller ball with her finger. And she says, I can't get any control with this at all. And so, it was really just all these moments of people having to be vulnerable and they just didn't understand it because it was never something they used before.

And it was even a concept they used before. So, I feel like you know, obviously we've overcome lots, lots more technical hurdles than that. But again, big change, big changes ahead. So, I'm eager to help this community do this next transformation again, because there is a lot for us all to learn.

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Ari Kaplan

With that in mind. What are you looking forward to at the 2022 event?

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Sherry Kappel

I am first and foremost looking forward to the fact that we can all be together again. I'm equally looking forward to the sort of, it's almost like in a strange way, Ari, it was a, it was a, the pandemic was a on the good side and the bad side, a break from what had happened before.

So, it's either that we weren't all of us using conferencing tools such as the one you and I are using now, too. Now everyone has had to use them. And so, it was just this break of all these things that people could shun away or not fold into their day. Now, they all had this opportunity to kind of pick them up.

So, what I am adoring about the 2022 event is we basically get that blank page I talk of, right? We get to not necessarily start over, but we get to carry over that momentum. And so, when you look at the sessions list, when you look at the exhibitors, the start-up hub that's going to be in the exhibit hall you look at all of these wonderful new trends that are popping up.

I'm just so eager to have us all together with a kind of refreshed view of how we can actually see through the next ten years, if that makes sense.

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Ari Kaplan

And what are your team's objectives for ILTACON.

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Sherry Kappel

My team is going to be, again, really dedicated to answering questions for our customers about the products that they have. And think of it as what are the next versions? What's their next upgrade or transformation strategy, depending on how they have to chart that out? Our other objectives would be to work with our sales team to meet with customers and listen to what they're saying.

Our sales team and our product team will be there in full force. So those are just exciting conversations to have with customers. So many great ideas get generated, and questions get answered. And new approaches to things get formed. So, I'm really looking forward to all of that.

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Ari Kaplan

Which sessions should be on every attendees list Oh.

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Sherry Kappel

I am so grateful that you've asked this question. So, number one, if you're in town on Sunday, you have to go to whichever one is appropriate. They're going to have about an hour of these kind of kick-off conversations focused on any topic from you're in the C-suite to, you know, you're concerned about pricing of legal services or data science.

But all these little breakout sessions and it's a collaboration kick-off that happens at 30. I think everyone who's there at that time, they need to join one of those just to get, you know, get the, the conversation rolling and meet some people and listen to other ideas. So that's a nice one. And then on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, you never should skip a keynote.

And if, as a matter of fact, it's at 9:00. So, it isn't obnoxiously early, right? It's at 9:00 and the first two days are a keynote by Patrick Schwerdtfeger and he is an author of a number of books. One of them is something like something about the pandemic. I'm going to mess it up the title of the book.

But hang on, I'll tell you what it is. It's Pandemic Incorporated, eight forces driving business failure, fortune in the post-COVID-19 economy. Certainly, a good read, but basically, he is going to deliver Monday and Tuesday's keynote. And his keynote on Monday is all about thinking bigger. His comment, which just grabs you, is these are exciting times and the next ten years will be nothing like the last ten.

And so, everyone needs to join the keynote. And then the second day he's taking a deep dive into big data. The third day as keynote is not yet announced. But again, I would tell you, attend every keynote if nothing else. Then there are several change management kinds of sessions. But the first one on Monday is about why you need a change management strategy to get your lawyers to adopt technology.

And this is a really critical conversation to have and a really critical session I think, to attend. I mentioned the start-up hub, Ari, have you seen that before? Have you run to ILTA and talked with those folks, yeah. So, what's really cool is there's a great session also on Monday about taking a chance on me. It's the title Take a Chance on Me.

And it's all about vetting technology start-ups and your organization's ability to work with a start-up. And what are the approaches to that? I think it's just a brilliant session. There's a ton of sessions around teams. So, I would say just do a search in the agenda for the word teams and, you know, pick the ones that feature aspects that are important to you.

I think another one and this is not in the technology geek side per se because the emphasis in my mind is all on driving diversity, equity, and inclusion. But there's a fantastic session scheduled on Tuesday about data matters, and it's about using the technology to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion and inform that process. And I think that's a must – a must talk about the topic in this year's ILTACON.

Let's see a few others might be the pandemic pivot. And this is all about adjusting your IP strategy to once again embrace change. So, lots of meaty topics going on in that one. There's a great one also in the afternoon about connecting people and processes and data to enhance collaboration I think important to attend. And then finally, I was going to mention there are a number of sessions on AI, blockchain, machine learning, etc. and so I really feel that there's a there's a wealth and a breadth of sessions to pick for that so obviously you really need to organize your time at it to kind of take advantage of it.

And then I would, I would equally say, if you're going with a group from your firm, there's a sort of what would I call it, a conventional wisdom that you divide and conquer. But I would encourage everyone who's going with a group of their peers from their same organizations that maybe you should buddy up in some of the sessions because that way you each get to hear that, hear it, you know, be there, get your own perspectives, have a conversation about it afterwards.

So don't just sort of isolate yourself in a session if that makes sense. You know, go with a buddy in and then really drill into it afterwards because there's just so much wealth of insight that people are sharing throughout this conference this year.

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Ari Kaplan

I'm going to attend the migrating from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word.

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Sherry Kappel

You know what? We need to put that on.

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Ari Kaplan

Is that need to be back on the agenda.

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Sherry Kappel

Needs it needs to be back on the agenda if for no other reason to almost kick start the change management conversation. You know, don't be scared about the change management ahead. Look what we did already. So yeah, there's also a great one - two other ones on Thursday that I just want to mention the fact that there are conversations occurring about information governance solutions.

I think that is critical. So, if you're there on Thursday in the afternoon, attend that one and then this one, Ari, this one, I don't know how, it's funny. The great resignation is, is certainly not a laughing matter, but the great resignation is isn't it's something that's happening and it's something that we're all having to respond to because attaining talent, much less retaining talent, is going to be really critical for us all to get through the next ten years of transformation.

So, there's a session in the afternoon on Thursday called Avoiding the Great Resignation and Creating a Culture of Retention and Productivity. I think a must attend.

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Ari Kaplan

So, let's pivot a little bit to the logistics of this big event. What's the best way for an attendee to navigate, let's say, the exhibit hall.

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Sherry Kappel

Some will take it kind aisle by aisle. Right. But one of the things that ILTA did this year is to create and actually they admittedly they had it available last year too, but they organized the booths, not necessarily their placement, but basically as you're walking by, you get a sense of what neighborhood of technologies that that company is representing, and I feel like that's a really great indicator if you're just going through the booths kind of aisle by aisle, you can kind of pick out where the vendors are, though the business partners that are supplying technologies that you or your firm are in need of. So that's one thing. I think another thing is to just make sure you look at the map, your show app, there's an app called Map your Show.

And basically this this allows you to navigate and sort of schedule yourself or give yourself guidance to the different booth numbers where everyone is and then finally, what I would equally say is be sure that the vendors that you want to see while you're there, be sure you know what their booth numbers are and you can go there quickly and, and chat with them and maybe set up additional conversation, whether in their demo room or in the hallway, whichever.

But I would just make sure that you have your list of everyone you need to see.

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Ari Kaplan

Where can legal professionals gain the most value from their ILTACON engagement with their business partners?

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Sherry Kappel

I, you know, I would say it's in the conversations and the discussions. Right. I, I feel as if ILTACON is such a rare opportunity to meet with, with literally everyone that you need to be talking to. And so, I would say if you, if you want to gain the most value, I would divide it up in some ways between the conference sessions, you know, always looking at the speakers of, of the session and saying, okay, what are they talking about this year?

And, and at the same time, what are some of the sessions about new topics that you haven't learned? So, give yourself time to do that. But equally, give yourself time to spend with your business partners in the exhibit hall and equally in their demo room, because there'll be conversation that are happening in that entire arena when put together that are really going to form your strategy for the coming decade.

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Ari Kaplan

How is your team going to incentivize booth traffic?

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Sherry Kappel

We have a couple things up our sleeves. One of them is we're going to have a barista the entire time that we're in the exhibit hall. Now, if you've ever, have you ever had to go on the hunt for coffee or hot beverage in the morning, you know that sometimes they're sort of few and far between.

And so yeah, we're going to have a barista in our booth. So that's one way. But I think largely it's just that we're going to have many from our various teams staffing the booth at all times. And with Litera specifically, Ari, we've brought together so many companies and so many technologies that we're going to have specialists in each of those areas. And then like the roles like the evangelist or the product leaders who are working across these integrations will also be there to represent the whole of it.

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Ari Kaplan

So, you've shared ideas for sessions to attend, ways to map out how to navigate this event, the ability to find great coffee works to wellness tips for attendees.

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Sherry Kappel

All right. Well, I'm going to give you one of my personal tips. And it's not, honestly, it is not a popular opinion. Okay. But my advice and recommendation is, yes, you want to spend time with other people, and you want to socialize. But either eliminate your drinking or really curtail it because you will not make it to Thursday.

Otherwise, there's just too much energy you have to expend to kind of take in all that you can from ILTA. So, my role, my plan always is that I don't drink until Thursday night. And then I go to that there's a big kind of closing party and that's the first time just because it's so you need so much energy and reserve to kind of work through this show and gather all that you can.

Another one is and this is especially for those who have to work in the exhibit hall or work around the entire show but really is for members as well and attendees as well and that's that you always want to have multiple pairs of shoes. And the reason is because your feet get such a workout if you don't you know, if you don't have multiple pairs of shoes, your feet will hurt worse and worse and worse in the same places every day.

So, change your shoes up every day and it makes such a difference. I think the only other one is, is honestly just, you know, get your rest and that's pretty much the whole of it. Drink lots of water.

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Ari Kaplan

Any time management and organization strategies to maximize the value of being at the conference.

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Sherry Kappel

I think for the conference sessions that's where you have in many respects some of the biggest challenges so often there are sessions you want to attend and doggone it, they're at the same time. Right. So, I would start with the sessions you want to attend and then what I would do is to fill it in with conversations with your business partners, conversations with your peers in other firms.

Just taking advantage of the rest of ILTACON. I also know, though, Ari there, there are folks who attend ILTACON where what they do is they use the entire week to speak with business partners and then they listen to all of the sessions they're interested in on the various recordings that are provided. So that's another approach.

But I think you really want to check out the sessions and the session schedules because those things don't flex and you don't have any flexibility with them. So, I would just say you know, start there and then fill in all of the other aspects by spending time with the suppliers who are strategic to you.

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Ari Kaplan

This program is called Reinventing Legal. How is your work ultimately impacting that objective?

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Sherry Kappel

One could always sort of summarize that technology is really everywhere in everything we do at this point. Right. But I feel strongly that around the legal community specifically, while we have added technology to assist, what we may not have done is fully reformed or reinvented those legal processes and legal workflows. And so, what I would say to you is that our work within my team at Litera is to help people see how those processes can be.

They don't have to be radically changed. They just have to be you know, precisely aligned to the technologies that they implement. And so, the more that we can do at Litera to streamline those workflows and yet make them easy for people to adopt. I really feel that is ultimately impacting the reinvention of how legal services are delivered and how legal professionals are incentivized and, you know, with all kinds of tools that keep them at the firm.

Right. Who wants to work at a firm where they have no tech to support them, and they have so much drudgery in what they do. So, I feel like that's, you know, that's at the core being able to impact how delighted they can be that they have some technology to support them on the things that they have to do but gives them more time on the things that they really went to law school to do.

So that I don't know how does how does that grab you, Ari? Would you want to be at a firm that didn't have technology to support you?

00;35;06;24 - 00;35;13;00

Ari Kaplan

When I practiced, I was very lucky to work at a great organization that empowered its professionals with technology. So, I agree wholeheartedly.

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Sherry Kappel

It's so important.

00;35;15;17 - 00;35;27;15

Ari Kaplan

This is Ari Kaplan, and I have had the honor of speaking with Sherry Kappel, an Evangelist at Litera for this edition of Reinventing Legal. Sherry, thanks so very much.

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Sherry Kappel

Ari. Thank you. Lovely to spend time with you. And I'll see you at ILTACON

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