Geeks on the Town – the theme for the night before the opening of the 2008 LegalTech New York conference. I had the pleasure of spending Monday the 4^th at a fascinating mini-thinktank called the InsideLegal Forum. Held at the Microsoft Briefing Center a couple of blocks from the traditional LegalTech venue at the Hilton at 53^rd and 6^th Avenue, it was a brainstorming session that brought together leading legal technology industry personalities – including consultants, media representatives, conference organizers and prominent vendors – all organized by legal marketing/PR uberwizards, JoAnna Forshee and Jobst Elster of EnvisionAgency. After hours of fascinating conversation about the hot issues facing the legal technology world, a few of us decided we needed food, fast.

So with fellow legal blawgers Brett Burney (Burney Consultants and EDiscoveryInfo.com and Jeff Beard (from LawTech Guru), who happened to be staying in the same hotel, we trekked up from W. 49^th to the Cholesterol Mecca of the Western World, the famous shrine to corned beef, pastrami, knishes and the most spectacularly perfect sour pickles on the planet, Carnegie Deli at 55^th and 7^th Ave. After gorging ourselves on the typical 2 lb. mounds of steaming, perfectly tender “Woody Allens” (½ pastrami, ½ corned beef – beats having to decide!) – which, of course, none of us could finish (our cardiologists would have been proud of us for leaving nearly ½ on our plates), we decided the only thing three completely stuffed legal technologists could do was to head up) . . . we made a pilgrimage the center of the retail computing universe, the Apple Shrine at the SE corner of Central Park.

Entering the all glass above-ground “entryway thing” (I really don’t know what else to call it), you head down a spiral staircase into the largest Apple store space I’ve seen. And at about 8PM, it was absolutely crawling with people. The Genius Bar was stacked four or five customers deep. The checkout lanes were equally packed. But why did we go? TO SEE THE MACBOOK AIR OF COURSE!! The three of us made a beeline to the ten demo machines, waited to touch, to feel, to take in the Air experience. And it was every bit as satisfying as we probably all hoped for. It’s an utter marvel. Sure, there have been other 2 lb. laptops. But never one this thin. When you pick it up and turn it on edge, it’s hard to conceive of all the necessary parts and pieces that make a laptop tick being crammed into such a miniscule space. For those who read this and think all three of us are seriously in need of a life, I can assure you we DO have one. At least we know Jeff Beard does because on the walk to AppleMecca, and as we passed under the overhang of the theater on Broadway where “Mamma Mia” is playing that he actually owned original vinyl ABBA albums. Brett and I assured him we wouldn’t reveal this publicly . . . oops, guess I did!

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