Last September, when the company 8am \u2014 having successfully pulled off a major rebrand just three weeks earlier \u2014 then went on to pull off its first-ever customer conference in Austin, I wrote a review giving it high praise. Although that inaugural event was modest in size, it was big in energy, as well as [\u2026]<\/p>\n
Last September, when the company 8am<\/a> \u2014 having successfully pulled off a major rebrand<\/a> just three weeks earlier \u2014 then went on to pull off its first-ever customer conference in Austin, I wrote a review giving it high praise<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although that inaugural event was modest in size, it was big in energy, as well as highly polished and professional, with the feel of a conference on the cusp of something greater.<\/p>\n Now we get to see whether that momentum carries into year two.<\/p>\n Today, 8am is releasing the details of Kaleidoscope 2026<\/a>, its second annual customer conference, which will take place Sept. 22-24 at the Encore at Wynn Las Vegas.<\/p>\n LawSites has the exclusive on the details, including one the company had not yet revealed even on its own conference site: The keynote speaker will be Jesse Cole<\/a>, the founder of the Savannah Bananas<\/a> and creator of Banana Ball. The yellow-tuxedoed showman is famous for turning a struggling minor league baseball franchise into a viral global phenomenon by putting fan experience above all else.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s conference will span three days and feature more than 25 breakout sessions organized into three tracks, with attendees able to earn 15 or more hours of CLE credit.<\/p>\n 8am is the umbrella brand of an array of products that include the payments platform LawPay, the practice management platform MyCase, the personal injury platform CasePeer, and the immigration platform Docketwise.<\/p>\n In an interview yesterday, Nate Skinner<\/a>, 8am\u2019s chief marketing and sales officer, told me that the conference\u2019s core purpose remains the same as it was in its debut year.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of our first-principle philosophies around our customer conference that we started last year was we want to create an opportunity to have our customers connect with one another,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s not about the size as much as it\u2019s about the opportunity to create a deeper relationship with our customers, and for them to create those connections with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, the company is planning to grow the conference\u2019s size. Last year\u2019s inaugural conference drew roughly 300 attendees \u2014 a number Skinner said \u201coverachieved\u201d on the company\u2019s objective \u2014 and this year the company is aiming higher, hoping to draw customers, partners and prospective customers alike.<\/p>\n Regular readers will recall that I ended my review of last year\u2019s conference with a lament: The second Kaleidoscope would be in Las Vegas, a city I am not crazy about as a conference location. So I asked Skinner, Why the move from Austin, the company\u2019s hometown?<\/p>\n It was a matter of both geography and math, he said. With a customer base spread across North America, any host city forces most attendees to travel. But Las Vegas has the advantage of being easy and affordable to reach from almost anywhere in the country.<\/p>\n Beyond that, he pointed to the concentration of legal professionals already in that vicinity \u2014 some 14,000 attorneys licensed in Nevada, including roughly 2,900 solos, plus the dense legal population of Southern California, a four-hour straight shot across Interstate 15.<\/p>\n The company also wanted to go somewhere different. \u201cWhen we looked at all the places we could possibly go, and then you look at what everyone else is doing, [we said] let\u2019s not do what everybody else is doing, let\u2019s do something that\u2019s uniquely us,\u201d Skinner said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of legal tech conferences in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we knock it out of the park and everybody loves it, we\u2019ll go back,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t, and people wish they\u2019d gone somewhere else or we did something different, we\u2019ll adjust.\u201d<\/p>\n (Those hoping for a repeat of last year\u2019s free Tecovas cowboy boots should temper expectations. Skinner said the company leaned into the Austin theme because it was the company\u2019s backyard. This year, there will be \u201csome fun things\u201d with a Las Vegas theme, but less of it. When I suggested yellow tuxedos for all attendees in honor of the keynoter, he demurred.)<\/p>\n As for the programming, Skinner said the clearest lesson from year one was that attendees most valued hearing from their peers \u2014 not from 8am executives.<\/p>\n \u201cThey definitely don\u2019t want to hear from me,\u201d he said. \u201cThey want to hear from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n To that end, this year\u2019s speaker lineup leans heavily on practicing lawyers, several of them from the more headline-grabbing corners of the profession:<\/p>\n The broader session list spans three tracks \u2014 Practice and Profession, Tech and Innovation, and Business of Law \u2014 covering everything from estate planning for the great wealth transfer, to immigration law\u2019s unsettled landscape, to burnout, referral strategies and billing.<\/p>\n AI is well represented but, as was the case last year, does not dominate. Sessions include a grounded attorney\u2019s guide to AI, a debate over AI-generated evidence in the courtroom, and a hands-on workshop connecting 8am\u2019s MyCase to Anthropic\u2019s Claude to surface unbilled time and collection gaps.<\/p>\n Skinner told me that the company thinks of a great customer conference as having three main ingredients: \u201cA destination people don\u2019t hate to go to, programming that is useful and meaningful, and then the third is something that draws your attention\u201d \u2014 which is where Cole and his Savannah Bananas story come in.<\/p>\n The parallel between Cole\u2019s obsession with the fan experience and how law firms should think about the client experience, Skinner suggested, is hard to miss.<\/p>\n Last year, 8am put on its first-ever conference just weeks after completing a top-to-bottom rebrand<\/a>. This year, the run-up to the conference has featured its own major change, a new CEO<\/a>, with Jeff Hughes<\/a>, a member of 8am\u2019s board since 2024, succeeding\u00a0Dru Armstrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n I asked Skinner whether the company simply thrives on chaos.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not thrive on chaos,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t choose to do that again if we had the choice.\u201d As for the new CEO: \u201cJeff is here and he\u2019s great, and he\u2019s super excited to meet our customers and get to know everybody and join us in Las Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n In a press release announcing the conference, Hughes said the event comes at a time when the industry is at an inflection point.<\/p>\n \u201cLegal professionals are reimagining what a modern practice looks like, using AI and connected technology to work smarter and create better client experiences,\u201d he said. \u201cKaleidoscope brings together the ideas, technology, and community to enable each of them to meet this pivotal moment with confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Skinner sees in-person events as an antidote to the relentless hype cycle around legal AI. \u201cIt\u2019s very frothy out there,\u201d he told me. \u201cHalf of this stuff is kind of overblown clickbait.\u201d What customers want, he said, is for someone to tell them what is real and what is not \u2014 and they are more inclined to believe it face to face.<\/p>\n Kaleidoscope 2026 runs Sept. 22-24 at the Encore at Wynn Las Vegas, opening with a reception at the Encore Beach Club and closing with a party at the Intrigue nightclub.<\/p>\nWhy Vegas?<\/h3>\n
Peer-Led Programming<\/h3>\n
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A Steadier Year \u2014 Mostly<\/h3>\n
The Details<\/h3>\n