Energy is often contagious and that was very evident Tuesday morning at ALM’s annual editor and blogger breakfast which assembled a majority of ALM’s legal publication editors and contributors (easily 20 strong) as well as a room full of legal industry bloggers spanning substantive legal topics to niche legal market and trend coverage.

It was nice (from my perspective at least) to walk into a jam packed room at 8am and feel motivated to catch up with folks and make new connections. Among the hot topics was the re-launch/new look & feel of Law Technology News and the publication’s move to a content-driven publication (see our previous LTN post). Some of the ’early birds’ we chatted with included David Snow, ALM Media’s editorial director for technology and former legal technology editor for law.com, Steve Salkin, editor, Law Journal Newsletters, and Sean Doherty, the multi-talented (lawyer, tech guy and journalist) technology editor for Law Technology News.

During the bloggers meet and greet, we visited with Bowtie Lawyer Joshua Gilliland who has built a ‘cult like’ following for his Bow Tie blog within a few short years, and MyLegal.com’s Lisa DiMonte who clued us in on her social media site’s new ratings and reviews feature created to enhance lawyers’ existing online marketing and brand-building efforts. Thomson Reuters’ Legal Current blog, providing information and commentary on the business and practice of law, represented by communications specialist Nicole Hansen gave us a glimpse into their LegalTech coverage and focus on all things ‘hot and trendy’. We took a few seconds to share our initial insights on LegalTech as well.

Speaking of initial impressions, it was useful to catch up with some editors to get their take on what’s going on at the show. While LJN Legal Technology newsletter editor Adam Schlagman was struck by the attention being paid to small firms and solos, Charles Christian of the Orange Rag has heard a lot of buzz around strategic technology outsourcing, Office 2010 deployment and SharePoint. We definitely agree with Adam’s point that small firms are again on the radar, a refreshing trend considering 90+% of the nation’s legal professionals are within small or solo environments, and custom small firm technology solutions have always been elusive or way to complicated and expensive to gain real traction.

We spent some time in the afternoon walking the exhibit hall and while we had the sense that the hall was busy but not slammed, initial feedback from vendors (especially the financial management folks we talked to) indicated that leads were qualified and prospects more than willing to learn about vendor products and services. Our final stop ended with Client Profiles and a brief chat with sales director Chris O'Brien who proudly shared the company’s latest news, the acquisition of New York-based case management vendor Saga Inc. According to O’Brien, the acquisition adds the award-winning Saga Practice Manager software to Client Profiles' product portfolio, and expands the company's client roster through the addition of more than 430 law practices in metropolitan New York.