Here is my concluding post about SXSW for Above the Law. What did I learn at SXSW? Here are my top ten things from the need for social contact to privacy threats to solving the rural lawyer crisis and more.

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.

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The actor and well-known personality Rob Lowe took the keynote stage at LegalWeek 2025 yesterday (March 26) for a roughly 45-minute interview with ALM’s Gina Passarella, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer. Lowe is not just an actor—he’s also a producer, director, and author. The keynote was entitled The Art of Reinvention: Turning Setbacks into Stepping Stones.

Lowe was engaging, funny, and full of colorful stories and anecdotes. Turns out, he’s a pretty good storyteller by the way. That said, there was little in his talk that directly touched on law or legal tech—aside from the fact that his 86-year-old father is a practicing lawyer in Dayton, Ohio.

I attended an interesting panel discussion at the opening day at LegalWeek 2025. The presentation was called Do My Eyes Deceive Me? GenAI Hallucinations in Legal Research Citation Tools. The presentation was put on by AALL and the panelists were all law librarians — Anna Russell from Cornell, Diana Koppang from Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, Mandy Lee from Seton Hall, and Paul Callister from the University of Missouri.

Let me say up front: law librarians are some of the most trustworthy and practical voices when it comes to evaluating how GenAI—and, for that matter, other technologies—are actually functioning for legal research. They know how to ask better questions and look at a problem from every angle — something many lawyers don’t do or are not good at.

The next two weeks will be heaven for legal tech enthusiasts: LegalWeek and ABA TechShow will both happen between March 24 and April 5.

LegalWeek 2025, the glitzy New York legal tech shows kicks off this week. It’s one of the biggest legal tech events and is geared toward big law though perhaps not exclusively. It’s put on annually by ALM. It’s appropriate the Show is always in the Big Apple. Everything about LegalWeek is big.

The conference typically draws over 6,000 attendees from around the world, including legal professionals—law firm partners, general counsel, legal operations leaders, IT professionals, legal tech vendors, and consultants. It’s one of the largest legal tech conferences.

It’s been hosted annually at the New York Hilton Midtown since the early 80s.  In recent years, the educational programming foscuses high level thought leadership across several key areas, cybersecuity, data privacy access to justice, and—of course—AI. Networking will be big, as always.

While at SXSW I heard the results of a survey of rural residents by Mother. The data and research reveal interesting factors driving those living in rural areas. The sense of community, the values, the nature of creativity, and their aspirations all need to be taken into account in trying to solve the legal desert in rural areas.  Here’s my post on the issue for Above the Law.

There’s a concept in public speaking called the informed audicence. It means your audience should inform how you convey your message. In giving presentations to lawyers about Gen AI, presenters should focus on not only on the risks but on the benefits. And give practical demonstrations. A SXSW presentation drove these points home. Here’s my post for Above the Law on this point.

Here’s my post for Above the Law on lessons for litigators from SXSW panels on live theatre and marketing: start with the story and not with the technology, help you audicence experiance the story, don’t just tell them use data and AI to learn more about how to tailor arguments to individual decision makers, establish an emotional connection between your clients and witnesses with decision makers and make it personal