Observations on largest categories of sponsors of the ACC Annual Meeting

Bet you didn’t analyze the 118 sponsors (as of Sept. 20, 2008 ) for the ACC’s Annual Meeting 2008! I think they tell us what management issues are bubbling.

ACC categorizes each vendor, so I have used their 17 categories. Of the sponsorship group, 37 are law firms. I counted five associations of law firms (The Bomchil Group, LexMundi, Meritas, TerraLex, and Worklaw Network (See my post of Feb. 21, 2008 #2: law-firm networks with 7 references; Sept. 21, 2008: two more law-firm consortia.).

The largest group of sponsors, however, consists of 32 who are listed either first as “Electronic Discovery” or 11 more who are in that category later – sponsors could list up to eight categories (Access Data, Attenex, Applied Discovery, Case Central, Clearwell Systems, Contoural, CT Summation, Discovery Box, Electronic Evidence Discovery, eMag Solutions, Discoverybox, Discovery Mining, Electronic Evidence Discovery, Epiq Systems, Fios, First Advantage, Guidance Software, H5, Hudson, Legal, IE Discovery, Index Engines, Integreon, IPRO Tech, Merrill Corp., Mimosa Systems, Providus, Recommind, RENEW DATA, Special Counsel, SPi, and Transperfect) (See my post of Feb. 9, 2006: hundreds of vendors at LegalTech 2007.).

After that category, the most numerous sponsors are 22 in the category “Corporate Governance & Compliance Services” (BDO Consulting, Bridgeway Software, Business Integrity, Copyright Clearance Center, CSC, CT Corp., Ernst & Young, Exari Systems, Global Compliance, Huron Consulting Group, IBM, Interwoven, Iron Mountain, Kroll, LexisNexis, Nuix, Pangea3, Selectica, StoredIQ, Thomson West, WeComply and Wolters Kluwer).

It makes sense that service providers at this trade show reflect the hot buttons of general counsel: legal services, electronic discovery, and compliance.