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To finish off the week, we reached out to Legal IT founder and conference chair Dominic Jaar for his reflections on the event. Dominic is also legal counsel at Ledjit Consulting Inc.

Though economic concerns took a small toll on attendance, overall the attendees showed how Legal IT has grown since its inception.

"More than 45% of the people were from out of Quebec, which clearly shows the international recognition that LegalIT has achieved," Dominic said.

Read the rest of our email exchange with Dominic after the jump.

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For our final, a bit belated, interview from Legal IT 3.0, we have social media consultant Connie Crosby of Crosby Group Consulting.

Connie joined Kevin O'Keefe for the Monday session on "Building a Better Web Presence" and she also blogged and Twittered about the conference.

Read more of our email exchange with Connie after the jump.

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This post comes a day after Legal IT 3.0 concluded, but we wanted to be sure to get you the answers from Texas trial lawyer and computer forensics expert Craig Ball, another attendee and speaker.

Craig gave his popular presentation, "Power Persuasion (using PowerPoint in novel ways to increase attention of your audience)" and also presented on e-discovery, "Ten Nerdy Things You Need to Know about E-Discovery."

Read more of our email exchange with Craig after the jump.

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We'll be checking in with some speakers and attendees from Legal IT 3.0 to get their take on the conference and the conversation there. First up is Wisconsin-based legal technology consultant Ross Kodner, founder of the legal technology consulting company MicroLaw.

Ross is a panelist at Legal IT 3.0 this year, speaking at several sessions on topics that include, "The 'Free' Law Firm", "Achieving the Paperless Office" and "90 Tips in 90 minutes." He's also been Twittering updates from the conference (@rkodner).

We reached out to Ross to give his impressions from Montreal of the conference, the biligual aspect, and the pros and cons of using Twitter from a legal conference.

Read more after the jump:

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One of the first panels of Legal IT 3.0 this morning was on online marketing, entitled Building a Better Web Presence.

LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, along with social networking consultant Connie Crosby of Crosby Group Consulting and SEO guru Steve Matthews of Stem Legal, presented on how to develop strategies to help reach and build relationships with clients and potential clients.

"The panel may have been trying to whet appetites as far as what networking potential is, as opposed to practical know-how," Kevin said, noting that most of the attendees were not current Twitter users.

You can see Web-based practice management company Clio (@goclio) is, however, on Twitter, and shared some observations from the panel, as did InTechGration's Debbie Westwood (@intechgration).

In the session, Kevin argued that you should blog because the busiest people around get their information and news through blogs, and that Twitter is "the single biggest branding tool since TV."

Connie claimed that she feels blogging has pushed her career forward five years, and Steve said that, while your offline profile and reputation don't necessarily translate to your online reputation, that can help accelerate building it.

We'll try to have more panel recaps from Legal IT 3.0 as well, and remember you can follow the Legal IT hashtag on Twitter for more updates (#LegalIT).

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Leading lawyers and technologians gathered in Montreal this week for Legal IT 3.0, a two-day conference devoted to discussing the impact of information technologies and their potential for law.

The conference runs today and tomorrow, April 20 and 21, with speakers from private law firms, governmental institutions, judiciary offices, universities and affiliated research centers, as well as enterprises and organizations focusing on the development and use of technologies

Thankfully for LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, who is attending the conference and spoke at a panel on online marketing this morning, not everything is in French!

Here at LexConference, we will do what we can to provide some coverage of the conference, with a Flickr stream, panel coverage and some interviews of attendees.

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LexBlog's Rob La Gatta interviews Laura Calloway, who has been involved with ABA TECHSHOW for the past few years and is this year's acting chair of the event. Laura is the Director of the Alabama State Bar's Practice Management Assistance Program.

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Rob La Gatta chats with Ed Scanlan, Founder & CEO at Total Attorneys, in the company's downtown Chicago office on Thursday, April 2.

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Wearing one of four Rocket Matter-branded snuggies, founding partner Larry Port talks about his legal management company's services with Rob La Gatta.

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Brad Kolacinski of Scene Systems, Inc. talks to LexBlog's Rob La Gatta about the animation services his company provides.

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E-discovery writer & blogger at Gabe's Guide, Gabe Acevedo, takes some time out on the TECHSHOW 2009 floor to talk to Rob La Gatta about the event thus far.

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At the Total Attorneys booth on the expo floor at the 2009 ABA TECHSHOW, affinity manager Beth Bond gives a rundown of the company's services to Rob La Gatta.

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LexBlog had a chance to corner Ed Poll of LawBiz Management for a moment at ABA TECHSHOW 2009, and got him to answer a few questions on social media's involvement in his realm of the legal space.

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Most members of the legal community on Twitter will know Rex Gradeless by his handle — @Rex7, where he has amassed an army of followers from around the world. He also blogs at Social Media Law Student. We caught up with him between sessions at ABA TECHSHOW 2009.

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David J. Bilinsky, the Canadian attorney behind the well-respected blog Thoughtful Legal Management, spoke with LexBlog at ABA TECHSHOW 2009 about technology and it's ever-changing role in the legal profession.

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LexBlog's Rob La Gatta talks to Ledjit Consulting legal counsel Dominic Jaar on the TECHSHOW 2009 floor about his take on where technology is taking the law and why he hasn't been as active a blogger in recent months as he used to be.

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Adriana Linares, President of LawTech Partners, Inc., took some time away from her busy day at the concierge desk at ABA TECHSHOW 2009 on April 3 to chat with LexBlog about her involvement in the event and why she blogs.

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In one of LexBlog's final interviews conducted at TECHSHOW, Rob La Gatta caught up with the ABA Journal's Ed Adams just prior to Friday's Beer for Bloggers event to ask him about the Journal's use of new media in their online efforts.

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LexBlog caught up with legal technology consultant, speaker and author Andy Adkins near the Concierge desk to get his take on all these new media tools — Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc — and to gauge what value he sees in each of them.

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Brett Burney, e-discovery consultant and the blogger behind the blog ediscoveryinfo chats with Rob La Gatta about social media's use in the e-discovery realm.

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Texas attorney Bob Kraft of Kraft & Associates speaks with LexBlog's Rob La Gatta about how technology has changed the legal practice since he first became a lawyer.

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LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe chats with Canadian SEO expert Steve Matthews on how Canada's legal community compares to the United States in terms of blogging adoption rates. Steve is the founder of web marketing company Stem Legal.

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Nerino Petro, known for his work with the State Bar of Wisconsin and who blogs at Compjurist.com, speaks with Rob La Gatta about the perceived lack of technological innovation in his home state and more.

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We stopped by the MonetaSuite booth on the expo floor Friday morning, and were fortunate enough to catch Cecily Drucker & Chintan Shah of MonetaSuite at a free moment. They gave us a rundown of their product's services and the value it brings to the legal profession.

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On the expo floor at TECHSHOW 2009, Jack Newton of Clio gives LexBlog's Rob La Gatta a visual tutorial of how Clio and some of its new features operate on both a standard computer and the iPhone. The Vancouver-based Clio includes a full suite of practice management tools targeted specifically at the administrative needs of sole practitioners and small firms.

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Rob La Gatta talks briefly with Tom Mighell, last year's ABA TECHSHOW chair, about Twitter's use at the event in 2009 and the other highlights Tom is looking forward to. Tom writes the Internet legal research blog Inter Alia as well as co-writing the blog and book The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies with Dennis Kennedy.

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Massachusetts lawyer & well-respected blogger Bob Ambrogi talks with Rob La Gatta and Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog on the expo hall floor to offer his take on social media & the law.  Bob is known internationally for his writing about the Internet and technology.

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Just after giving his keynote speech Thursday at ABA TECHSHOW 2009, Richard Susskind spoke to us for a few moments about his personal use of social media over the past few years. Richard is a legal technology expert who lectures internationally and independently advises major professional firms and national governments. His most recent book is, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

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As the ABA TechShow rolls along into Day 2, bloggers continue to share their views on sessions and social networking from the conference.

Principal of Burney Consultants Brett Burney shared snippets of the conversation from the session "Assessing the Big Picture: Planning and Implementing the LItigation Hold" at his blog, eDiscovery Info.

On the Thomas Reuters blog, WestBlog, vice president and general manager of client development Preston McKenzie discusses client development at TechShow in a video interview.

Rick Borstein of Adobe Acrobat is antipating a request for slides after his session today, and has already posted them for his presentation on "Acrobat for Legal Professionals" at his blog of the same name.

Jim Calloway, Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program, has posted his impressions of Richard Susskind's keynote address on his Law Practice Tips Blog.

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No legal tech conference is without its share of coverage via blogs and Twitter, much like LexBlog is doing here at LexConference, and the ABA TechShow is already inspiring plenty of chatter in the blogosphere.

Washington D.C. attorney and e-discovery consultant Gabe Acevedo has been blogging about TechShow at Gabe's Guide as well as Twittering (@GabeAcevedo). His tweets from legal technology expert Richard Susskind's keynote address provided handy updates on the speech: "Susskind: the phenomenon of social networking will become what email is to lawyers now."

Law student and blogger Rex Gradeless (@Rex7) has also been blogging the conference, with plans to include video and photos in his coverage.

We blogged yesterday about MonetaSuite's showcasing of their new mail product to bloggers, and one has already offered up her take. Electronic evidence lawyer Sharon Nelson wrote on her blog, Ride the Lightning, that the MonetaMail program is "simple and clean, easy for lawyers to use" and advised conference attendees to check out the free version of the software at MonetaSuite's booth in the exhibition hall.

Check back for more updates from bloggers on TechShow throughout the conference.

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With all the buzz about TechShow taking place online, the event has now become a Trending Topic listed at Twitter's Search homepage.

Take a look:

Keep it up, folks. Twittering legal professionals were highly active during the first session this morning and are showing no signs of letting up. Keep tagging those posts with the #techshow hash tag so we can keep the momentum going.

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As mentioned yesterday, the conference started off with a panel on Twitter. The panelists discussed the basics of the micro-blogging site while also providing a great deal of useful information to even the most seasoned Twitter users. 

The session started with Tom Mighell, a Senior Manager at Fios Consulting and author of Inter Alia and The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration, briefly introducing the panel's members and Twitter itself. He stressed the need for balance when using Twitter, mixing updates from one's professional life with appropriate comments from your personal side.

Then it was Kevin O'Keefe, LexBlog's President and CEO, who explained the many reasons to use Twitter. Those included the many networking opportunities, the ability to follow breaking news with greater depth than through mainstream media and even gaining work.

Catherine Sanders Reach, Director at the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center, did a great job of explaining the basics to those in the crowd who didn't have any experience with Twitter. This batch, who made up about fifty percent of the crowd, may have been a little overwhelmed by the session's fourth panelist. 

Dominic Jaar, a consultant  at Ledjit Consulting, provided some of the sessions most interesting content by going over the wealth of tools and other websites available to Twitter users. Expanding far beyond the usual suggestions on desktop Twitter clients and tools like TwitPic, Jaar referenced several sites providing everything from analytics to music. For a complete list of all the sites referenced by Jaar during the presentation, take a look at his del.icio.us page.

As useful as the information presented during this session was, the most important learning experience for any potential user is simply going to Twitter, creating a username and getting started.

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Kicking off the ABA TechShow tomorrow will be a panel on Twitter, 'All aTwitter: What's the Buzz about Microblogging?'

Held Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m., the session will be presented by LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe, e-discovery and legal technology expert Dominic Jaar, blogger and e-discovery consultant Tom Mighell, and Director of the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center Catherine Sanders Reach.

Kudos to the TechShow board for strategically scheduling this session as one of the first of the conference. This session should increase attendees' awareness of the benefit of following Twitter throughout the conference, as well as inspire them to send out their own Twitter updates.

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Many companies will send out press releases to try to court bloggers and get them to write about new products. This usually has the opposite effect, as bloggers will promptly hit "delete" and take a skeptical view of that company in the future.

The MonetaSuite team is using the occasion of the ABA TechShow to take a creative approach other companies should emulate — actually coming to bloggers to introduce their innovative product and seeking out their feedback.The company invited legal bloggers to a private dinner and breakfast in Chicago to introduce their new legal technology application MonetaMail. Attendees will receive a one-year's licence to MonetaMail, with the expectation that they will provide feedback and input on their experiences with the product as they use it. Tonight's dinner is at capacity; the Friday breakfast has only a few spots left. UPDATE: The breakfast is now full.

According to LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, this is the most effective way to get bloggers interested in your product, as well as help yourself.

"You're building relationships with early adopters of these products, of which a lot of them are bloggers," Kevin says. "You're getting feedback from people on your product. They're helping you improve it, and those enhancements are dictated by users, not developers. You also have bloggers who are influencers who have bought in to what you are doing. As they use the product, people who feel like they're part of it will share their story with other people."