At its second annual conference in Las Vegas in May 2017, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) offered professional development sessions on a range of topics to more than 1000 attendees – twice the turnout of its first conference, which was held a year ago.

CLOC describes itself as a “non-profit organization consisting of legal operations professionals providing education, sharing best practices, networking, establishing a professional organization and community, and driving positive change across the corporate legal services ecosystem… deliver[ing] corporate legal support to small, medium and large businesses ….”

A review of the CLOC conference by Patrick Fuller, vice president of business development at AI software producer Neota Logic, makes interesting reading. He notes that attendance at all of the educational sessions was high, especially those dealing with AI and analytics. However, Fuller also observes that law firm management was inadequately represented at the conference – a fact that does not bode well for firms that want to be in the forefront of legal operations technology.

Fuller said that he had never seen so many senior management representatives from industry vendors at a conference before, demonstrating the growing interest not only in legal operations but also in CLOC. He also noted that “the automation of repetitive legal tasks is increasing,” and that legal operations professionals are having a significant impact “on their legal departments and the business of law as whole.”

Fuller predicts that attendance at the 2018 CLOC symposium will double again, which means that this conference is one that law firms – and especially their senior executives – cannot afford to miss.

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