I’ve attended lots of recent legal tech conferences where one or more of the keynote presentations are given by celebrities who are decidedly not lawyers or legal professionals. They are instead actors or professional athletes or well-known for-hire speakers. They typically have little to any passing connection to legal world.
I know the argument for having them: these celebrities will draw attendees who know the name and just want to see and hear the person. Indeed, most of these keynotes are well attended but the value is often questionable.
To be fair, celebrity keynotes do occasionally offer inspirational talks that motivate the audience to apply the presenter’s key points to every day work in an uplifting way. You walk out feeling energized and can see or maybe feel the points.
But most of the time they are merely entertaining talks that somehow try to shoehorn in something marginally relevant to legal. These are less valuable and frankly feel contrived. Sometimes celebrity keynotes don’t even do that. Either way, other than seeing a famous person, these presentations are mostly a waste and do little to contribute to what lawyers and legal professionals do and need. And since they don’t offer CLE, it’s pretty easy to see the real purpose: put butts in the seats.
Some Examples
For example, I recently attended a keynote where the presenter told his life story and about how he was seriously injured in a plane crash. It no doubt was interesting to him but it didn’t seem to have much connection to the audience.
Yet another keynote was by a former well-known pro football player. It was sort of interesting but also of limited value. How he related to other football players coming into the league as a star college quarterback may have been engaging to the football fans in the audience but not very relevant to the practice of law. Plus, it was clearly geared to a male audience. It’s content that was more of a whimper than the hoped for bang.
And then there was the keynote I recently attended by a well-known and supposedly expert crisis management guru. This guy did little more than tell stories about situations in which he had been involved. Interesting? I guess. But there were a couple of problems.
The first problem was that he didn’t make clear how crisis management was relevant to day-to-day legal. Yes, some legal work involves crisis management. Things like a significant data breach. Even some of the single incident catastrophic events in which I was involved. But typical legal work is much less so.
But the worst problem was that his presentation and even his stories were disjointed. For example, he told us at the start of his presentation that he was a helicopter pilot and there are more helicopter crashes in the U.S. than in the U.K., suggesting it must have something to do with his talk. But he never mentioned it again and it wasn’t till someone asked him in the Q and A session that he told us the difference. It had nothing to do with his subject.
What crisis management lessons he did impart were offered through a series of vignettes about things in which he had been involved. But he never tied all this up at the end or summed them all up. Instead, he just told a long story about how he applied to be an astronaut and made it most of the way until he was rejected. And then he just stopped.
Frankly, I had the feeling he accepted the invitation to speak and then just showed up with his stories without thinking through who the audience was, how they would resonate, and how to tie it all together.
Moreover, the lessons he offered, things like empower your team, use distributed expertise, don’t be dictatorial, don’t get swallowed up with the data, and lead with hope were the kinds of things you’d find in any airport self-help book.
And if you asked most lawyers and legal professionals if they had experienced and agreed with his points, they would say of course, that’s common sense and intuitive. These are things most of us already know.
Celebrity Keynotes: To Do or Not to Do
My assessment? Celebrity keynotes like this are rarely a good call. Certainly, conference organizers can’t be blamed for it all: celebrity speakers are difficult to corral and ensure they are prepared and relevant. And often their prior speaking reviews are excellent.
But these kinds of keynotes if done poorly can leave a bad taste in the mouths of attendees. Their expectations for the keynote and for the conference are diminished. If the keynote is at the beginning, it can sour them on the rest of the conference. If it’s at the end, they walk away on a down note.
So what is the answer? Believe it or not, there are very engaging lawyer and legal professional speakers. The ones who make you think. Who uplift you. Lawyers and legal professionals can be great speakers if they put their mind to it. Speakers like Jordan Furlong whose keynote I recently discussed.
There are also great speakers who, while not in the legal space, can talk about issues that a legal audience can easily relate to. Cory Doctorow, for example, has given presentations to legal audiences and talked about the enshitification of tech products in ways that the audience can immediately grasp. And Nilay Patel, who I also wrote about, doesn’t practice law but managed to make some compelling points applicable to all of us in the room.
The real problem with celebrities is that most of them are celebrities. They don’t take the time to tailor what they are going to say in a way to make it relevant to the audience. Unless they are really good natural speakers, you don’t get what you’re paying for.
So if you’re going for celebrity bang, keep in mind that what you might get is the proverbial whimper.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.
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