ACC’S 2009 Annual Meeting Kicks Off in Boston

ACC kicked off its Annual Meeting with a Welcome Reception and networking event in the Exhibit Hall last ight.  The Posse List team is here all week to cover the event.  Posse List members will recall the ACC Docket provided us copies of its May 2009 issue on document review (click here) and we starting covering the ACC last year when the General Counsel of The Gap suggested in-house law departments should use contract attorneys on a wider basis (click here). 

This week there are over 100 event sponsors and exhibitors from international law firms, litigation support providers and vendors/leaders in knowledge management.  Suprisingly, with the challenges many have been confronted with, along with the cuts in travel budgets, the Annual Meeting is expected to draw a crowd of more than 2,000 in-house counsel and over 2,500 total attendees.  ACC President Fred Krebs is extremely satisfied with this year’s turnout, and he noted during the Leadership Dinner last night  “We have more attendees here with us this year than last year….and ACC closed out the fiscal year on September 30 with over 25,000 worldwide.”

There is an emphasis this year on a theme we have discussed the last 2 years:  how corporations can protect themselves against the risks associated with high-profile scandals, security breaches, IP threats, increased litigation, audits and regulatory investigations.  As we have mentioned, corporations continue their trend to by-pass law firms and go directly to data management and e-discovery vendors to manage their compliance, ESI needs, etc. as they seek to “save a buck” and secure more ownership over the costs – especially the e-discovery process.

Note:  last night we chatted with several GCs about the consolidating of e-discovery vendors (failures, buyouts, etc.) and “who will survive?  Who do we pair up with?”

And all of this segues into the area of governance, risk and compliance (GRC).  This is not a “new new thing” and has been chronicled for well over the last year and half.  But this convergence of e-discovery and GRC technology and management is reshaping the industry and providing new opportunities and new directions for contract attorneys and other members of the Posse List. 

And the event is packed with vendors (and the swag is high-end and overflowing, an indication of the elite audience vendors are targeting).  One of the most interesting so far is the Practical Law Company (click here)  who gave us stacks of CDs that cover the “how to” of just about every area of law.  We will be discussing with them distribution options of this material for Posse List members.

It will be a great conference and we will be reporting on it all week.  For some pix from yesterday, here is a slide show provided us by Rob Robinson at Orange Legal Technologies (who provides us the “Top 10 plus” e-disc0very stories every week):  http://bit.ly/zRb3J