The first annual G100 Legal CIO Forum was held last August 2006 in parallel with the ILTA Educational Conference in Orlando, Florida.  In total, 34 CIOs attended an event tailored to the unique needs of the largest law firms in the world and designed to leverage the best aspects of the ILTA conference for CIOs of Global 100 law firms.  This “by invitation only” event will be held again this year.

 

Facilitated by David Baker, Chairman Baker Robbins & Company, the inaugural 2006 event explored how technology could be used to add to the firm’s bottom line.  Recognizing that G100 CIOs have many opportunities for peer networking and ready access to leading technology executives, the first ILTA G100 conference featured four smaller, innovative vendors that might be below the radar of large firm CIOs.  The conference model was similar to venture capital funding where jury-selected vendors present their solutions and face questions from the assembled CIOs who discuss the vendors’ merits. 

 

The selected vendors were Branch-IT Corporation, Contact Networks, AIRTIME Manager and Element 55, falling into two categories:  CRM social networking and time capture.  All four vendors mine existing data repositories for “hidden” information that can support or even generate revenue.  Contact Networks and Branch-IT address CRM shortcomings by mining the firm's e-mail server and other data repositories, generating relationship and contact information with zero data entry by lawyers.  For automated time capture, AIRTIME Manager and Element 55 offered solutions that track and automatically capture time spent on e-mail and phone calls, including BlackBerry Usage.

 

A private lunch was held on both days, and LexisNexis and Thomson joined the attendees on consecutive days and presented their business strategies around all of the recent (and ongoing) acquisitions.  The meetings opened up an important dialogue with both vendors that we are hopeful will continue to expand and grow.  A private reception was held with the vendors so that the CIOs could continue those discussions and, even more importantly, get better acquainted with their fellow G100 CIOs.