LegalTech New York, Day 1

LegalTech kicked off yesterday in New York City. Although the number of vendors exhibiting is down, all of the major legal technology players are here. Many have opted to just book meeting suites, which is a clear indication that the legal technology industry has moved past the discovery stage into mainstream - vendors are known, and no longer need to spend time introducing themselves. 

The theme of the opening  keynote was how legaltech is transforming in this age of disruption, innovation and revolution. Andrew McAfee, codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, spoke about how AI is changing everything, and how fast it's happening. AI is now the undisputed champion of strategy games like chess and Go, consistently out performs human experts at everything from medical diagnoses to transportation logistics, and is quickly accumulating more real knowledge than all the accumulated human knowledge that has ever existed. Pretty much the only thing AI is not better than humans at is dealing with humans, reading emotions and persuading. Good news for lawyers who make their living persuading, but given the rapid change over the past few years, this may not last much longer. 

The Wortzmans team is gathering lots of information. Look for more in tomorrow's report.