Over the years, we have worked with legal conferences regarding speaker selection – from the process to communicating it to potential speakers throughout the legal community. Not surprisingly, this is something vendors ask us about quite a bit. Thought leadership, especially via speaking at conferences, is so important when it comes to elevating a vendor and their 'credibility and believability' status, and often makes the difference among competitors. With that said, speaking opportunities for vendors can be few and far between, and too often in the legal community, the same vendor speakers are selected over and over. Part of the reasoning for that is thought leadership and name recognition, but trust in the speaker plays a huge part as well. 

Speaking at ILTA Conference: Proven Tips

For some vendors, the annual ILTA Conference is the pinnacle of their annual marketing program and what better way to be represented than to speak. ILTA values thought leadership across the entire legal community, and as such has always been open to vendors as writers and speakers when many other legal organizations haven't. Although there isn't a way to secure a speaking opportunity for sure, there are ways to increase your probability:

• ILTA is a peer organization focused on education and therefore requires 65% of their speakers to be ILTA members. This allows for 35% speakers from the vendor/consultant community.
• The members select the content. Keep this in mind when you are submitting topics and draft your proposed topics (we'll get to this process below) accordingly. Too often, vendors submit a topic that is too self-serving.
• Increase your chances of acceptance by partnering with an ILTA member for your presentation.
• Reputation, reputation, reputation. It goes without saying that selling from the podium is the ultimate no-no. Keep in mind, once you have a reputation for selling, it will be almost impossible to overcome it. There are too many options for great conference speakers versus the risk of going with someone that has crossed the line.
• Overall, remember that this is an excellent opportunity to network with ILTA members and build thought leadership.

ILTA's Call for Topics and Speakers

"Times are changing and so is the course catalog. Once you submit a course, it
will be reviewed by Gail Persichilli, ILTA's Programming Coordinator. Based on
feedback from members, we will work closely with the peer groups and regional
member liaisons (RMLs, formerly known as city representatives) to schedule
webinars and local meetings. You might be asking, "What can my team
do?" Please continue submitting ideas to the course catalog throughout the
year. We also encourage you to work directly with the course catalog instead of
contacting local RMLs. This will allow us to give you a better opportunity to
get your content in front of ILTA's members.

In addition to submitting topics for webinars and local meetings, it's time to
submit your topics for consideration by the 2014 conference committee! We are
also looking for topics for LegalTech Asia Summit in Hong Kong (March 3, 2014)."

The Process

Step 1 – Submit any course ideas you have to the course catalog here. You can submit numerous ideas but make sure they are all high quality. Tip: Look at last year's program to see what was selected by the members and what was offered.

Step 2 – Everyone within your orgranization that is a subject matter expert and is interested in speaking and/or writing for ILTA should be registered in ILTA's Expertise Database. From the main ILTA site, click on "MyILTA" and then "Expertise Database". Note: Each person has to have their own account and register through it, however, the process to get in the expertise database takes under a minute.

Topics are due to the course catalog by November 1, 2013!