LegalWeek 2025 comes to a close today, March 27^th. A week filled with educational sessions, parties, and announcements. Add to that an endless stream of meetings with vendors all too eager to show off their latest and greatest and you can see why I might be pooped. And I get to do it again next week at ABA TechShow.

Lots of people ask, what did you see or hear about at Legalweek that really got your attention? The truth is not much in the way of big announcements. All too often the big announcements turn out to be a repeat of what the vendor already has on the market or something they promise will be on the market someday. It’s like drinking from a fire hose.

/

Instead, I was more impressed at applications that focused on smaller things. Things that often are royal pains for lawyers and because they aren’t necessarily billable, are frequently left undone or at least not done till some time after the fact.

Here are two examples of what I am talking about.

AffiniPay’s Smart Spend

AffiniPay, a legal practice management, software, integrated payments, and fintech solutions, announced it will be offering a new way for lawyers to track expenses and get reimbursed. The feature is called the MyCase Smart Spend.  The feature is designed to work with a LawPay Visa Business Card. Here’s how it works: A lawyer uses the card to charge reimbursable expenses.

The smartphone app then asks for the client’s name and some other information. The lawyer provides the info and snaps a photo within the app. The info and photo are then uploaded to the client bill seamlessly and with no more inputs from the lawyer. 

While the platform does other things, this feature is key. Why? Tracking and turning in expenses is a pain. So what happens? You forget to record the expense. You have to keep and then find the receipt and/or remember to take a picture. You have to remember to fill out the expense report and turn it in. The result: expenses don’t get recorded and the firm takes a direct out-of-pocket hit. Or the expenses are turned in long after the fact and the firm is out the money for a significant time. Or reimbursement to the lawyer or legal professional incurring the charge is delayed. The platform changes all that and minimizes lawyer time. Smart thinking (pardon the pun).

NetDocuments Automatic Document Characterization

The second small feature that improves lawyers’ lives in a small but significant way is NetDocuments, the cloud-based document, email, and records management service. With NetDocuments, lawyers and legal professionals upload their documents into the cloud and then use the service for various document related tasks. As designed, when a document is uploaded, the author must characterize the document so that it is easily retrievable later either by you or others in the firm for reuse, review, and application to other situations. 

The problem in the past has been that the lawyer had to select from various possible labels so that the document could be so characterized. That selection process took time. It also involved deciding which label to use.

 So what happened? To save time, a document author might just click on the first label option which happened to be “aviation”. Or they just click the “other” label to save time. Or they might hurriedly select a label option that did not properly characterize the document. The result? The vast library of documents in the NetDocuments universe was not easily searchable or retrievable later. 

The solution? NetDocuments now offers an AI tool that reviews the document and makes the category selection automatically, ensuring accuracy and retrieval. Want to find a commercial lease? One click and the firm’s library of commercial leases comes up. Small addition. Big impact.

Look relentlessly for real lawyer and legal professional pain points and remove them.

Address the Pain

I’m sure that there were other examples of small features that I missed or didn’t get to. It’s easy to miss these kinds of things as vendors try to overwhelm attendees with all the things that they are offering. It’s like a lawyer giving a closing argument to a jury and trying to talk about each and every favorable fact when they should be focusing on the limited number of facts that really make a difference. Otherwise, you risk boring the jurors and they miss your message.

Want to make a big impact as a vendor in legaltech? Think small. Look relentlessly for real lawyer and legal professional pain points and remove them.