BluShark Digital 0:00
Welcome to the conference connection. Your go-to place to get the scoop on what conferences are coming up that you need to know about. Here are your hosts, Paul Faust, president of Ringboost, and Seth Price, founder of BluShark Digital and managing partner of Price Benowitz.
Paul Faust 0:17
How are you doing, folks? Paul Faust, here at ringboost.com, amongst many others, as you know, along with my co-host every episode, Seth Price from BluShark and Price Benowitz, and this time, we have one of the legends of the industry, the one and only, Sharon from MTMP. Seth, before Sharon takes it away, I’d let you do an intro, because obviously, you know, you know Sharon as well as I do, and let’s hear your little intro.
Seth Price 0:39
Well, been working with Sharon for over a decade. She does a wonderful job with MTMP twice a year in Vegas. And you know, we were just talking before we jumped on camera that interesting time in the mass tort world. So a lot of people trying to figure out where things stand, what’s going to be settling, what’s not, and what’s new. So Sharon, take it away. What do we have to expect for this MTMP?
Sharon Boothe 1:02
Well, I’m really excited to talk to you guys today, because, like I was just saying, this is a different year. Even from April, I’m seeing a lot of changes. So there’s a lot of… For MTMP, we’ve got a lot of new vendors. So companies that maybe came to MTMP in April and kicked the tires and attended, they’re now getting booths and bringing their teams, and so we’ve got in the exhibit hall, you’re going to see a lot of new faces, a lot of the usual suspects, but a lot of new faces. I want to say at this point, at least a third, if not more, of our vendors are have never had a booth at MTMP. So excited about new and it’s not, it’s a lot of AI. Okay, there’s a lot of AI out there. Everybody knows it. Mike’s going to do his opening session with Mark Lanier, talking about AI. And we’ve got a lot of AI companies, but we just have a lot of everything. There’s just a lot of companies that have beefed up their presence at conferences. And so I think, you know, attendees are going to see a lot of new faces, which I’m excited about.
Paul Faust 2:19
That’s great. Look, I’ve been at, I don’t know, 20, if not maybe 40, MTMPs. And the one thing about this conference is it’s got a mix of everything. It doesn’t only have unbelievable tracks for lawyers, paras, and everyone else. It’s got marketing tracks. It’s got business tracks. It also has an unbelievable social setting, parties, and places to connect that are not sitting in a room in a suit listening to the leaders of the industry speak. There are cocktail parties, there are bands, there’s great speakers. It’s really a great comment. It’s not a conference, it’s an event. It’s really a time where everyone come together and there’s plenty of time to sit out privately and discuss your one-on-one issues with these vendors or other lawyers, or seek out the experts that you see from the stage. I think that’s what makes empty MP very different. Not only that, it’s one of the few, if not, you know, Master focus conferences, but it’s really an event.
Sharon Boothe 3:19
Yeah, go ahead, Seth.
Seth Price 3:20
No, I was gonna say that just the fact that you do have access to people that you wouldn’t have otherwise, to me, is what makes it special. There’s you guys have done such a nice job of curating it, where you have a breakout space within the exhibit hall outside. You’re in Vegas at the hotel. So there’s, you know, all sorts of people. That’s the whole sort of feel of it gives you, when you want to crowdsource, where you want to spend your time and money, I think that you’ve done an exceptional job of giving people who, if you’re going to get on the plane, to find due to one conference, to figure out how to make mass torts part of your firm. This is certainly the one to be at.
Sharon Boothe 3:58
Well, something that I would point out is that just a little inside baseball on how this conference gets put together and why I do some of the things that I do. Like, for example, you know, we, if you guys remember, we had Saquon Barkley at the opening night party in April, and we didn’t get him until, I don’t know, a couple of weeks before the conference. So we didn’t really get much of a chance to market it or anything. And I did that specifically because I knew that it would make that opening night party even better, and it would give people even more excuses that they didn’t need to go. And maybe there would be people who would go to the open ACT Party that were otherwise going to skip it and go out to dinner. Everything has a purpose at mtmp. So putting Saquon Barkley up there wasn’t because I live in Philadelphia and I was psyched. It was because I did that specifically, because I wanted everybody to go to that party. And everybody goes to that party, then you guys do business. Because that’s why I did it. And so if you look around the conference, a lot of our choices and a lot of the way we do it is all because we’re trying to make it a place where everybody can have a good time, meet new people, get business done, and have and you know, have an environment that’s conducive to that. So anything I do, or my team does, it’s usually with the purpose of, we’re just trying to make it a place where you all can meet up.
Paul Faust 5:28
And as someone who’s been a leader in the vendor space for a while, you know you’re one of the few conferences that at everyone whether the conference was perfect or not, you have a meeting with the vendors and say, What did you think? What did we do wrong? How do we do better? No one’s going to get it right every time, and no one’s going to get it right by every vendor. But you at least ask the question, and you say, what did we do wrong? Tell us, bluntly, we’re going to work on it. How do we make it better? So I think as a as a vendor coming to the space, you have the opportunity to speak to a lot of the attendees. There are multiple forums to do that. Now, if you choose after the event to run out to a private dinner, that’s fine, that’s on you, but the lawyers are in the bar, they’re in the casino, they’re at the lunches, they’re at the dinners, they’re all around to interact with if, if that’s your choice. If you say to yourself, hey, I’m in Vegas. I want to go to a hockey game. I’m going to go to the sphere. I get it, yeah, but that’s on you.
Seth Price 6:29
At the same time, half the time, you know, there’s a hockey game with 40 lawyers at it last time, so on one of the nights off. So I think that is the great thing is, is that when you get, you know, it’s a combination of meeting new friends, but like, if you go there over time, you end up building up a group of people that you look forward to seeing.
Paul Faust 6:48
Yeah, anything different this year? Like, are there any some topics that maybe we haven’t seen at MTMP, that are coming out because of new, you know, new torts or anything?
Sharon Boothe 6:57
Yeah, we actually just added, in the last two weeks, we added two sessions, one on the Roblox case and one on sports betting. And so those have got some really good firms behind them. It’s not like you’re looking on Google and it’s just aggregators, or, you know, people are just, it’s Anna Paul Weiss, it’s, you know, it’s good firms that are white, Luxembourg, it’s people that you would want to hear talk about why they’re getting involved in these cases. So we’ve got on that, on the sex assault and human trafficking, social media addiction, Uber/Lyft, video game addiction, sports betting, there’s a whole branch of Mass Torts Made Perfect now that is covering all of those kinds of sessions. And I was talking to a vendor today who just signed up, and he said, My audience that, you know, I’m primarily trying to reach single event lawyers. And I said, well, at Mass Torts Made Perfect, everybody has got to be doing single event. Even the mass tort firms do single event. But not everybody that’s at Mass Torts Made Perfect does mass torts. They’re, they’re checking it out. They’re there to see if this is something they want to get involved in. But it’s the audience is, you know, it’s constantly evolving. We’ve got, right now we’ve got a couple of 100 first-time attendees, lawyer first-time attendees, paralegal first-time attendees that have never been to a Mass Torts Made Perfect ever. And so that number is consistent. So if you come and you’ve got to come to MTMP, all the time, you’re going to see a lot of the usual suspects, but we’ve always got a lot of new people. And I think that’s kind of the one of the real strengths of it is we’re always bringing new people into it.
Paul Faust 8:50
All right? That was one of the things that was important. You said, you have, you have a new paralegals do this, who should be coming, too often at these conferences around the country. We see, you know, Seth Price comes from Price Benowitz or somebody comes from their firm, but there’s a lot more here. Is this a conference where you should bring your chief marketing officer, your head paralegal, your intake team leader, who is this meant for? Because I think too many times at conferences, we’ve discussed this on the show before, people bring the firm owner. They’re trying to drink to a fire hose. It’s hard to get buy-in because the staff and the team didn’t get excited too. So who should be here? Who has room for this event from someone’s firm?
Sharon Boothe 9:31
Well, it’s that’s a really good question. So, you know, the way the agenda is broken out now, with the five tracks, you’ve got something for basically everybody at your firm. So you’ve got the main stage, which is, which mass tort projects is your firm involved in, and which one should you be involved in, and how do you get involved? So that’s, that’s the main stage. Then you’ve got all of the business sessions that’s for your intake department, for your CFOs, for your firm administrators. And we’re talking about all kinds of stuff at business of law. It’s not just, I mean, it’s across the board. It’s financing for cases, vetting cases, building out a mass torts department. How you use AI to build your practice and, and, and what all of the new facets of AI are that law firms should be looking at. Then you’ve got a paralegal track three days of paralegal sessions, and every paying attorney, every attorney who registers for MTMP, can bring one paralegal per registration for free, 1000 bucks, $1,100 which is free to them if they want to bring their paralegal and then. So it’s really, it’s across the board is for everybody at your firm, because we’re going to cover something for each facet in all of those tracks you’ve got the trial skills track for the people at your firm who actually go to trial, if you’ve got single event guys or master people who end up getting involved in actual trials, we’ve got a trial skills track. So it’s, it’s not just going and hearing about what’s going on with Ozempic which is, I think the way Mass Torts Made Perfect used to, used to be, you know, 10 years ago, you went for the updates on the cases, and that was it. Now, it’s everything that has to do with having a law firm in this environment, this economy, this with the challenges, with the you know, there’s something for everybody.
Paul Faust 11:33
Awesome and for those, I It’s unbelievable. I say, who don’t know? Can you tell people where to go to register the hotel, the dates, if the room blocks still available?
Sharon Boothe 11:44
That’s a good question to set. Because, okay, guys, Vegas is on sale. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Vegas is on sale. They have had a downturn in their tourism numbers. So you can go on mtmp.com and register and there’s a passkey link on our website, so you can register for the conference, and you can also get your hotel room at the Bellagio. You get Marriott points. Now, if you’re a Marriott Bonvoy member, when you book through the pass key. You’ll get your Marriott points because MGM, which owns Marriott, also owns the Bellagio, and then go look at the Vegas websites, because everything is on sale. If you want to go take somebody to a show, chances are it’s on sale. So now is the best time to go to Vegas, and our room rate is low, and there’s going to be free stuff getting thrown at you all over the place in Vegas. So I think of all the years, this is the one to go and take advantage of that. So
Paul Faust 12:51
and what are the dates? Again,
Sharon Boothe 12:52
it’s October 21 to the 23rd and we’ve got Alex Honnold, who was in the documentary Free Solo. He’s a free climber. He’s going to do a luncheon talk, and he’s amazing. He’s going to talk about resilience and how you move forward. And then we’ve got Dierks Bentley, the country singer. He’s going to perform that evening, and Mike’s going to interview him, and then he’s going to perform. He’s bringing, I think, a trio of singers and performers with them, so it’s not just him and a guitar. It’s going to be really cool.
Paul Faust 13:35
So look for a lot of the east coasters. Think we’re going to be flying into Law-Di-Gra in San Diego, showering up, jumping on our planes and going right to MTMP. Very easy.
Sharon Boothe 13:44
San Diego to Vegas is easy.
Paul Faust 13:44
This is nothing. We can even get a group together, maybe drive over together. Let’s have some fun. Sharon, I want to put it out to you. I think it’s important, because the conference connection, the show Seth and I started, it’s all to let the industry know, both vendors and lawyers, what’s coming up. Why you should be there, who should be the dishes for the community. I’m going to put it out there. You said that 30% are new vendors. I am happy if you want to do a zoom call with new vendors. I could tell you myself, I’m sure Seth would. I could bring out a couple kind of people who’ve done 400 conferences to give them a little zoom call if they want how to get the most out of these. How to be a vendor in the industry. I’m happy to do it. We could do a zoom call. We could do anything you want, if you want to do it on the ground in Vegas before. But I will put that out there, because the way I look at this is, and I hate to say it, I’m kind of getting up there. There’s a lot of gray, and I think, and I think we have to give back to this industry that that gave us so much. I’m not going anywhere yet, but I’d love to help out if we could with these new vendors, because I think, I think there’s a lot to get out of this, if you understand how to work this and how to do it, right,
Sharon Boothe 14:48
yeah, because the vendor to vendor relationships are really important, and the new vendors are there to to. You know, if you’ve not met them before, this is a, it’s. MTMP is a great place to, you know, get a lot accomplished. I mean, you can, you can do your networking, go to the sessions, meet the vendors. You can get so much done if you just, you know, if you just try, and Vegas is, it’s easy.
Paul Faust 15:13
I’ve always said, I’ve always said there’s four parts to every conference. I used to say three parts. There’s four parts to every conference when you’re looking at whether you should attend something. One is the conference itself and the speakers who they are bringing to the stage, the experts are bringing in that you have first hand access to, you could talk to them and get off the stage. Number two, the vendors, because I don’t like to call them vendors, industry partners. These are people that might have the one piece of software technology idea they know, they know often how to run this that’ll help you. So that’s number two. Number three, the other attendees, I’ve seen millions of dollars of deals being done because people sat next to each other and met each other and they decided to work on case together. And the other one is you. What do you bring to the conference? Are you coming to sit by yourself? Are you coming to go to dinner with your friend from Vegas? Or you coming to open yourself up to the industry? So when you look at this, look at all four pieces. If any one of those is a success, the conference is a huge success. If you get two, three or four of those success, it’s a grand slam in the World Series. So that’s my position on how to do these conferences. Is there’s so many little pieces. You can literally look at an agenda and say, I don’t want to sit through one of those. Okay? I mean, I disagree with that. There’s so many other pieces to get at these things, and you don’t build relationships online and on the phone like you do when you sit with people and talk about issues.
Sharon Boothe 16:40
everybody goes to it really is, I mean, I say that I run it, but it really is the epicenter. So I believe that.
Seth Price 16:47
I agree with everything you’re saying. Is a it is both from a substance and a form point of view, and the way you’ve curated the interaction with the opening party through the different sort of social options throughout, interspersed with the substance, I think, is just great.
Paul Faust 17:10
Thanks. So folks, I will leave it at this. Sharon, listen any final thoughts that you want to say? We’re going to see you guys in Vegas. Get there, register, and we look forward to seeing you. If you’re definitely going. My birthday is October 28. You could bring a small gift now. Seth and I, Sharon, look forward to seeing everybody. This is the one, and it looks like there’s a lot going on in the mass tort world right now, and what’s and it’s very different than what we’ve seen before. So let’s come out and see what’s going on.
Sharon Boothe 17:41
Thanks, guys,
Seth Price 17:42
Thank you.
Paul Faust 17:43
Bye, guys, good to see you.
BluShark Digital 17:44
Thanks. Thank you for tuning in to the conference connection. Make sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t already, and we will see you for our next episode.
