This Speech Sponsored by ...

My pal JoAnna Forshee has (finally) started to do some blogging at her new venture InsideLegal.  She recently hosted the InsideLegal Summit, and it appears to have been a fantastic success.  The one topic that really caught my eye was the debate surrounding the "Pay to Speak" trend.  What is Pay to Speak?  It is when conferences (like LegalTech*) allow vendors to "sponsor" a conference track.  The controversy, which has been brewing in the legal conference industry for a while, is over what level of control the vendors have over their sponsored track, and what responsibility conference organizers have to disclose that control.

Why is this a big deal?  If a (fictional) company XYZ Discovery Solutions pays $25,000 to sponsor the "Electronic Discovery" track at a conference, what do they get for their investment?  More specifically:

• Does XYZ get to pick the topics for the track?  
• Does XYZ get to choose the track's speakers, favoring those who sell or promote XYZ products, and excluding other speakers who don't?  
• Does XYZ have a responsibility to present information the attendees want to hear instead of information they want attendees to hear?

If the answers to any of these questions are yes, do the attendees know that the "CLE accredited" sessions they attend are given by a hand-picked roster of sponsor-friendly speakers?  And are any CLE accreditation rules compromised?

Right now, the answers to these questions aren't clear, and I'm sure each conference organizer and each sponsor approach the "sponsored track" differently.  I don't think the sponsored track should go away, but I do think some disclosure is in order.  Just as lawyers must avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest (which in some cases can waived by agreement), conference organizers must recognize the inherent conflicts that arise when a for-profit vendor sponsors, designs and staffs a CLE accredited, "educational" session  

At a minimum, the conference must disclose whether the speakers in a sponsored track are chosen by the conference or by the sponsoring vendor, and whether those speakers are paid by the vendor.

I applaud JoAnna and her InsideLegal partner Jobst, for getting this out in the open.  Your comments are welcome.

* I use LegalTech as an example here only because I know they have sponsored tracks, and the InsideLegal Summit happened in NYC at the same time of LegalTech.  I don't know what the vendors get for their investment and what rules (if any) LegalTech places on the speakers or the content in those sponsored tracks.

Comments

[Gil Friend]

This seems to be a going trend in the conference business, and not just for legal conference. (It's happening in the rapidly growing cleantech/sustainability space too.)

Transparency is the absolute minimum requirement, but that's not the only problem, since it winds up giving the podium only to those with the most cash, which is not necessarily always those with the best ideas. (And is also rough on those who earn their livings from speaking ;-)

[Jordan Furlong]

Matt, maybe sponsored CLEs should be run like any other presentation with corporate funding -- by providing a "word from our sponsor." A representative from the sponsoring company could take the podium for the first few minutes to "bring greetings" from the company and give a few details about its services. Then that person steps down and leaves, and the moderator takes the podium to introduce the topic and the speakers. There'd be complete separation of the ad people from the editorial people, so to speak. That guarantee of speakers' independence goes to the heart of CLE as lawyers expect it: without it, a lot of good speakers would simply refuse to attend and audiences would dwindle.

We're now conditioned to expect ads before everything from movies to online articles: might as well add CLE to the list. Or hey, in the spirit of Internet advertising, maybe the company representative can stand behind the panel and hold a long, brightly coloured banner over their heads, switching it around every so often. :-)