Monday, January 31 marked day one of LegalTech Year 30 and our 12th year of attending and covering the what? where? when? and how? of this show. Beyond the obvious show benefits – attending sessions and previewing vendor solutions, the biggest 'perk' of LTNY has always been networking and meeting old friends. With that said, we kicked off our week by catching-up with Curt Meltzer and Joe Bookman of Pinhawk LLC. Roughly a year ago, Curt started editing PinHawk's Law Technology Daily Digest, an aggregation of relevant legal technology news, announcements and business strategy. Today, the daily e-newsletter reaches 12,000+ legal professionals and influencers and has become a staple for many of us in the industry. Hat tip to Curt and Co. for not only aggregating relevant legal tech news, but also for his spot on and sometimes provocative commentary on the day's top news items. You can registration for free here.

After PinHawk coffee, we joined a throng of conference goers for the first of three daily keynotes: "Legal vs. IT: Turn the Battle into a Solution to Meet Compliance". Presented by Gabriel Buigas, HP's Debuty General Counsel, the kick-off session definitely attracted a standing & sitting room-only crowd, but disappointed in terms of unearthing any new 'learnings' or best practices' related to enhancing the IT vs. Legal relationship, within large corporations and law firms. While Buigas stressed the importance of communication between IT and legal as well as the identification of mutual interest or overlap as the key to creating collective buy-in and forging mutual results, the session provided little practical advice to handle the true disconnect that exists between legal and IT. The session fizzled after about 40 minutes of presentation and Q&A. 

As has become tradition at LegalTech NY, we briefed with several legal technology editors and commentators throughout the afternoon starting with Charles Christian who made the trip across the pond from the UK to find out what vendors like RealPractice and CompuLaw were showcasing this week. Charles, who authors his highly successful Orange Rag blog, also publishes and edits the Legal Technology Insider and American Legal Technology Insider, newsletters dedicated to covering legal IT news in the UK and North America, respectively. After Charles, InsideLegal spent some quality time with Rob Ameerun, the multi-tasking brainchild of Legal IT Professionals (LITP), the global legal IT LinkedIn group and website attracting over 14,000 subscribers from legal vendor executives to IT managers, directors and law firm CIOs. Rob, based in the Netherlands, has developed a remarkable resource for legal IT-related news and insight. Daily news alerts provide recaps of vendor announcements and an impressive cadre of permanent columnists and guest authors that tackle all aspects of legal IT and business. We were very excited to finally meet Rob in person (again, the beauty of networking at LegalTech) and were truly impressed with his passion for legal IT and the legal community as a whole, all reflected in what he has built in a very short time with LITP.

Later in the afternoon, we shared coffee with Mark Santiago, Managing Partner for the North American operation of KermaPartners, an international management consultancy with a distinct focus on the legal market. Having known Mark for over a decade, it was good to catch-up and hear about his ambitious plans for a major outsourcing project involving global law firms- more details to follow within the next few weeks. We ended our day with Adriana Linares, lawyer trainer and small firm consultant extraordinaire and owner of LawTech Partners, and collectively came to the conclusion that although 'super busy and buzzy' with attendees and exhibitors, no announcements or product launches rivaled the extravagant WestLawNext launch from 2010. With that said, here's a short list of product news crossing our desk on LTNY Day 1 2011:

• Clearwell Systems Breaks Barrier in Concept Search Usability for E-Discovery: Clearwell’s Transparent Concept Search opens traditional “black box” process to deliver interactive, relevant and defensible concept search results.
• RealPractice™ Announces New Website Building Tools and Lead Management with Latest Release of My RealPractice™
• ADERANT Announces Paperless Prebill Application, a new ADERANT Expert module that enables firms to more easily and efficiently manage the prebill process.
• Judges Select Grand Prize Winner in LexisNexis Ultimate Law Firm Marketing Makeover Contest: Case, Rajnoha & Boudreau, LLP Wins $50,000 worth of Online Marketing Products and Services from LexisNexis.
• LexisNexis Introduces LexisNexis Litigation Profile Suite: Launches with LexisNexis Expert Witness Profiles as first in a series of releases, provides analytical information on more than 200,000 experts in North America.
• IntApp Wall Builder Now Manages Law Firm Ethical Screens and Confidentiality Controls for Over 1 Billion Documents Globally.
• Exterro simplifies and accelerates electronic discovery with version 4 of Exterro Fusion, the award-winning legal solution suite: Exterro Fusion 4 cuts litigation costs for several Fortune 500 and Am Law 100 customers.
• Worldox Productivity Suite: Affordable Workflow from World Software Corporation is Unveiled at LegalTech New York.