Not surprisingly, the biggest topic of conversation at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2011 convention in Nashville is last week’s announcement by Hewlett-Packard (HP) that it was acquiring Autonomy for $11.8bn. The most common reaction–in addition to the rush out the door to buy HP’s now discontinued TouchPad for 99 bucks–was surprise at the healthy purchase price.  Although some ILTA attendees saw how the deal might make sense logistically, virtually no one thought the deal made any sense at all with such a high price tag for Autonomy.

Cloud computing–and law firms’ reluctant move toward it–is another big topic, but another trend that seems to be developing as the e-discovery industry matures is its move away from law firms. Many vendors are reporting that five years ago, their businesses were 70 percent or more in law firms, with the remaining 30 percent or less of the business with corporate clients. Vendors now report that those ratios have flipped, with corporate clients now making up the vast majority of business.

Although the e-discovery market may be shifting away from law firms, at least one vendor hasn’t forgotten them.  Exterro has announced at ILTA the launch of Fusion LawFirm. As the name implies, the new application is a version of Exterro’s Fusion platform designed especially for law firms.

Other vendors meeting with The 451 Group at ILTA to brief us on their product launches and other announcements are:

• AccessData, which is launching its new early case assessment application, AD ECA
• kCura and Nexidia, who announced their alliance where Nexidia’s audio and voice recognition application will be integrated into kCura’s Relativity platform
• LexisNexis Applied Discovery, which made an ILTA announcement of its new partnership with Equivio to add predictive coding to its platform
• LexisNexis LAW PreDiscovery with the launch of its new early case assessment (ECA) application, Early Data Analyzer
• Nuix, which announced a new version of its platform last month
• Orange Legal Technologies, which did an ILTA launch of PurpleBox, its new collection and ECA tool
• Recommind, which discussed its predictive coding patent, and may have hosted ILTA’s best party at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame
• Wave Software, which announced a new version of its Trident e-mail processing application.