The Institute of Legal Accountants of Ireland
Rinn, Oranmore, Co Galway | 083 423 7455

CONFERENCE 2011 INFORMATION

The Institute's 2011 Conference was held at the Law Society in Blackhall Place, Dublin 7 on the 9th September 2011. The Future of Legal Services was the theme of the 2011 conference. The Conference was sponsored by Legal IT.

It followed on last year's conference which proved to be the Institutes most successful Conference ever with over 150 delegates attending. This Confernce too proved attractive with well over 100 delegates attending.

Further details are in the conference brochure here (You need Adobe Reader to view these. You can download it free of charge by clicking here.

The Conference provided CPD points and hours for both Solicitors and Accountants.

The Conference Sponsors were Legal IT.

Jim Power. Economist. Jim Power Economics.

Our first speaker was the renowned and influential economist Jim Power.

Jim spoke on the Irish economy and how its financial system is currently going through a period of unprecedented flux and change.

Jim predicted that when normality returns, the Irish economic and financial landscape will look very different. Business levels will be lower than in the past, regulation will be intense, and transparency and accountability will dominate the landscape.

Jim's website is here and very kindly he has left us a copy of his slides here.

Ivan Gomez Cloud Computing Microsoft
Our second speaker of the morning was Ivan Gomez of Microsoft Ireland. Ivan is currently the Senior Director for Online Services in Microsoft’s European Operations Centre. Ivan discussed Cloud computing, Microsoft offerings today and the benefits and challenges of going into Cloud. Microsoft has approximately 5,000 Cloud customers in Ireland currently. There were many questions from the floor for Ivan mainly focusing on confidentiality, data protection and reliability. Ivan is the Senior Director for Online Services in Microsoft’s European Operations Centre. Microsoft believe that concentrated and swift efforts by Ireland to invest and promote cloud computing will improve Ireland’s competitiveness and return the economy to growth. Ivan's slides are here and here.

The Law Society provided a a sumptuous lunch served in the Presidents Hall.

Professor Richard Susskind. Drivers of Changes in the Legal Sector. University of Strathclyde
In the afternoon, Professor Susskind spoke about the drivers of change in the legal sector – the demand for ‘more for less’, the shift toward the commoditisation of legal service, the growing impact of information technology, and the liberalisation of the legal market. He argued that one key to the future is to decompose legal work into its constituent parts and to source each part in the most efficient way. He also spoke about the growing impact of legal process outsourcing, the use of agency lawyers, the role of paralegals, and the systematisation of routine and repetitive legal work. For lawyers who are willing to adapt, he claimed that the future holds exciting new professional and commercial opportunities.

Richard's website is here.

Ian O'Flaherty. The iPad as an Ally. Trialpad

Our final speaker of the day was Ian O’Flaherty of Saurian Litigation Support Limited (Ireland). Ian was born and raised in Dublin and currently lives in Miami, Florida with his wife and three children. Ian presented on “Practicing Law with an iPad”. Ian’s presentation was an overview of business and productivity apps in use by Lawyers. Ian covered apps for legal research, remote access, document reviewing, editing and presentations. Ian demonstrated the app “TrialPad” which he successfully designed, developed and brought to market and is currently available for purchase from the Appstore (cost approximately € 65). Ian is currently working on another app due for release later this year. Trialpad can be seen here. Ian's wbsite is here. After the conference many attendees asked for more details of the apps mentioned by Ian. Ian has very kindly provided that information and it is here.

Membership information is available here.

Our Thanks to all who supported the conference.

Legal IT are this year's Conference sponsor.

For details of the previous year's conference please click here

Below are some photos from the conference.

A section of the crowd listens to Ian O'Flaherty.