Conferences I'm watching.
You don't have to attend every conference. You have to be in the conversation around the ones your market cares about - before, during, and after. Here's my current New England watchlist, and how I keep it without a travel budget.
Start with the audit → Email RussellSee ServicesThe 2026 watchlist
Three events, three different rooms - a bar association CLE, a defense bar gathering, and the biggest legal-tech vendor floor in the country. All three are within driving distance, so any of them can turn into an in-person day. The watchlist isn't a substitute for showing up - it's how I decide which days are worth the drive.
CLE by the Sea
July 16 • Newburyport, MA
The Greater Newburyport Bar Association's annual CLE, run in partnership with the Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire bars, plus the Essex County Bar, the Women's Bar of MA, and Starting Out Solo.
Why I'm watching: three state bars in one room is the border-corridor story in miniature. The lawyers here practice across the same MA/NH/ME lines their clients drive every day - exactly the firms whose marketing should cover two states.
Manchester, NH
October 16 • Manchester, NH
New Hampshire's legal community concentrates in Manchester the way its caseload does - and I'm in Manchester regularly anyway.
Why I'm watching: New Hampshire's defense bar is small enough that one good day of conversations covers a meaningful share of the market. This is the kind of event where showing up in person still beats everything else.
ClioCon 2026
October 26-27 • Hynes Convention Center, Boston
The biggest legal practice-management and legal-tech conference in the country, in Boston this year - keynotes, AI sessions, and a vendor floor the size of a casino.
Why I'm watching: this is where the tools your firm will be sold next year get launched - and the vendor floor is where the poker question matters most: is this booth making you money, or are you making them money? I've written about that exact question.
Who I'm hoping to catch: Jared Correia
Red Cave Law Firm Consulting • Legal Toolkit Podcast
Jared's a buddy of mine - he runs Red Cave Law Firm Consulting and hosts the Legal Toolkit podcast, and he's given some version of this same vendor-floor talk more times than either of us can count, at ABA TECHSHOW and everywhere else solo and small firms go to get sold software. If he's on the agenda, it's worth walking over, because he's usually covering:
- How to tell when a tool solves a real problem in your practice versus when it's just the shiniest object on the floor
- A buy-vs-build framework for case management, CRM, and billing software - before you sign anything
- Where AI is actually saving solo and small firms time right now, and where it's still mostly vendor hype
- The questions to ask a vendor before you sign: implementation cost, data portability, and what it costs you to leave
The room I'd join first: MACDL
Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers • macdl.com
Not a conference - an association, and the only statewide one in Massachusetts devoted exclusively to the defense bar. They run CLE through the year, and it's CLE built from the defense side only, not the evenhanded both-sides overview a general bar program has to give you. If you practice criminal defense in this state and you're picking one room to be in, this is the one I'd pick - for four reasons that have nothing to do with marketing, and one that does:
- First-year membership is five dollars. There is no version of that math where it's the wrong call.
- Steeper discounts if you're full-time CPCS or a bar advocate with at least half your practice court-appointed - the lawyers who need it most and are least likely to expense it.
- Members get discussion boards and email groups. The listserv is where you learn what's actually happening in a courthouse well before it's written down anywhere.
- The Strike Force: a team that responds on an emergency basis if you're threatened with sanctions for defending your client too hard. Most associations give you a newsletter.
- And the marketing one: the member directory is public and searchable. A listing in an independent statewide association's directory is exactly the kind of third-party, verifiable citation the AI models lean on when they decide who counts as a real criminal defense lawyer in Massachusetts. Five dollars for a citable source is the cheapest AI-visibility work available anywhere.
I want to be clear that I have no relationship with MACDL's finances and nothing to gain from any of this, so let me put my own money where my mouth is. Join for the five dollars. If you get to the end of the year and decide it wasn't worth it, email me and I will personally refund your five dollars, out of my own pocket, as an act of charity.
The five dollars has been set aside for this purpose. I do not expect to need it.
Event details: Greater Newburyport Bar Association and cliocon.com. Jared Correia / Red Cave: redcavelegal.com. MACDL membership and benefits: macdl.com/join.
A $10-a-month conference strategy
Most solo and small-firm lawyers skip conferences because the math doesn't work: registration, travel, and two lost billing days against a vague promise of networking.
The conversation around a conference is free, it starts before the first speaker, and it's still going after the exhibit hall closes.
I run an AI monitor on X that flags posts about the events on this list - who's speaking, who's attending, what got people talking. It costs about ten dollars a month. Engaging with that conversation puts you in front of the same people the conference would, and by the time you do show up in person - at the events worth the drive - half the room already knows your name. That's the same expected-value math I'd apply to your ad spend: maximum presence per dollar, and fold the rest.
Want your firm in these conversations?
For New England criminal defense lawyers who want to be visible where their peers and referral sources actually pay attention - without burning a travel budget to do it.
Start with the audit → Contact Russell Matson