ILTACON 2025 Recap: implementation over headlines

ILTACON 2025 felt different. The crowd was bigger. People came to compare notes on what works. Attendance hit roughly 4,600, the largest ILTACON to date, with participants from more than 30 countries. Over 200 vendors in the exhibition hall. There was a lot to explore and digest.

Whether you need a refresher or need to catch up on main conversations, we've got you. The notes are based on scribbles, conversations, session notes, and wonderful reporting from friends at Artificial Lawyer, Legal IT Insider, Law Sites, and Dewey B Strategic.

In a nutshell: AI continued to dominate conversations, yet the thread was implementation. Leaders asked better questions. How do we put this into the work? How do we prove value? How do we keep risk in check while we scale? Sessions, hallway chats, and vendor demos converged on the same point. Execution quality decides outcomes.

From tools to agents, and why that matters

The focus was more on agentic systems than standalone AI assistants (which was the topic of conversation last year), representing a shift from individual productivity tools to integrated workflows.

The agent conversation remained refreshingly practical and pragmatic. Hallway chats centered on verification methods, traceable citations, and strict permission structures. As the volume of work produced increases, reviewing everything from scratch isn't expected (or sometimes even possible), spot checks and validation become the approach. Trust and professional judgment, what I would call "taste," stood out as key differentiators in agentic workflows.

Search remains important

Speakers repeated a core point. LLMs are not search (great recap here). You get the best results when search and generation work together. Find strong precedents with search. Then let AI analyze, summarize, and draft.

Start with retrieval quality. Reduce noise in inputs. Feed models clean, curated data. Balance governance with what users need. For sensitive client work, use on-prem or lightweight models that protect data without limiting capability. This advice landed because it fixes daily friction.

Lawyers want the top ten relevant documents in minutes, not after clicking through systems. Integration and a smooth interface drive adoption. Even strong tools lose if the workflow is fragmented and slow.

Knowledge and Innovation drive change

Knowledge leaders see heavy testing across tools and teams. The result is change fatigue for users and KM staff (this was loudly echoed in a workshop led by the author). Many have to balance training and integration because tool longevity is unclear. Early adopters still see gains, largely by shifting time to higher-value work.

KM’s role is expanding. It is moving from curation to orchestration and strategy. The goal is not perfect precedents. The goal is a healthy, traceable input pipeline. Agentic models need guardrails, context, and operating rules. KM is owning that space.

Pricing pressures and client expectations

An interactive session (great recap here) pressed on billing assumptions. Alternative Fee Arrangements are growing, yet the billable hour will not disappear by 2030. Value-based pricing with a clear scope can lift quality and focus. The risk is mispricing. Fixed fees cut both ways. Agile budgeting helps manage the tradeoffs.

Clients want value, not just lower cost. They ask about AI features and how to use them. They still select counsel for expertise, speed, and budget discipline. Culture remains a barrier. Compensation tied to hours and origination slows reform.

Pricing leaders should connect AI spend to reliable delivery and clear results. Practice leaders should define where AI fits, the changes to expect, and how juniors will build skills.

Implementation quality as a competitive advantage

A pattern emerged across different sessions, showing that leading firms coordinate IT, finance, operations, KM, and security departments. They consider change management a fundamental discipline. The selection of tools is important, but the quality of implementation is even more critical.

Two habits help. Keep a visible, consistent project pipeline. Use a simple model that ties work to firm strategy. This cuts noise, speeds decisions, and sets expectations.

Capacity planning continues to be an important consideration. How do you reserve room for new and unexpected work, while making sure productivity remains high?

From pilots to portfolios

This year moved beyond last year’s pragmatism. The step was from isolated pilots to portfolio execution. It was clear in the exhibit hall and in sessions. With 233 vendor booths and 27 startups at Monday night’s opening, the talk focused on integrations and outcomes, not just features.

The language changed too. Less can we do this. More where does this live in the workflow. Less what the underlying model is. More which inputs we trust and how we verify outputs. The most impactful discussions paired ambition with discipline. Start focused. Instrument outputs so you learn. Work from use cases. Build reusable playbooks that scale across matters.

Project management as a secret weapon

Thomson Reuters Institute’s piece echoed what many shared in conversations. With the pace and complexity of work increasing, there has to be a deliberate focus on project management. Not just for PMOs, but LPMs and attorneys. They must steer it. Start with one prioritization model that links projects to firm strategy. Keep it simple.

Plan for about 20 percent of work to be ad hoc. Hold quarterly reviews that re-rank new requests in the open. Strong intake reduces chaos and improves forecasts. Some firms plan against multi-year themes to handle moves like cloud migration and AI rollouts.

Scale change management from project to portfolio. Use a reusable playbook for stakeholder maps, communications, and training. Update monthly during fast programs like Copilot and other AI initiatives. Expect branching use cases and emerging outcomes. Measure, then adjust. What gets measured and tracked improves.

Trust is the currency. Place a PM liaison inside key practices. Translate needs. Surface risks. Break silos. Culture sets the ceiling for anyone focusing on project management. Earn trust with small wins that matter to fee earners. Then expand.

The human factor

Human dynamics is still relevant. The opening keynote focused on resilience and professional joy. The aim is a sustainable pace during steep change. People want to learn without chasing every novelty. That takes better training, clearer playbooks, and safe spaces to test workflows. It also takes honesty about gaps in skills, processes, and capacity.

Firms need translators across legal, technical, and business domains. KM, data, pricing, and project roles now sit at the center as AI increases work volume. Many sessions cast these teams as the connective tissue for innovation. They set standards, coach practices, and keep momentum so implementations succeed.

G100/200 readout

Technology pressure is up. Expectations are up. Operating complexity is up. Leadership roles are multiplying. Project management, data, security, and culture now decide outcomes.

Boardroom themes

• Tech has moved from the basement to the boardroom. COOs and CIOs are aligning more tightly as firms expect leaders to understand tech choices and tradeoffs.
• Clients arrive informed about AI. Partners juggle speed and quality, with productization rising across services.
• Leadership stacks are crowded. New specialist roles add voices, which makes prioritization and governance harder. Change management is now a strategic initiative.
• Pilot and change fatigue are real. Teams must balance day-to-day operations with rapid advances.

Volume and complexity

Choice used to be simpler. Now the tech stack for firms is busier than ever, with overlapping tools that affect UX and integration. Leaders urged faster test-and-learn cycles and clear selection criteria.

Cloud architecture and cloud security are must-have skills as environments become more distributed. Vendor management rises in importance as firms shift to SaaS. Soft skills become hard skills because external partnerships now drive outcomes.

Security and data reality

Security risk is escalating. Deepfakes and data poisoning represent new attack vectors that can compromise client communications and AI system reliability. Planning for events that have not yet happened is still essential, and complacency is dangerous.

Data is the biggest blocker. Everyone owns curation. Bad data undermines everything from AI pilots to client reporting. Information governance must keep pace.

Talent and operating model

Recruiting is an arms race. Firms need people who can speak law, tech, and business. Project management skills are now table stakes.

The pace of change continues to accelerate. While new trends emerge, the success factors remain similar to the past, just more pronounced. What matters is a firm's ability to build adaptive systems for continuous learning, measurement, and adjustment. Focus on foundational issues rather than chasing every innovation.