How to Get In Trouble At Virtual LegalTech with a Cow

Did anyone out there attend Virtual LegalTech last week?  Did you see Bessie the Cow, Rocket Matter’s Chief Dairy Specialist?  No?

Of course you didn’t.  She’s been penned in.

For those of you who haven’t checked out Virtual LegalTech, it’s an incredibly rich online interactive environment.  We have a little virtual Rocket Matter booth there where we shill our legal practice management software.  It has virtual signage, virtual literature (i.e. downloadable PDF’s), virtual good-looking attendees, and even a image of me in full Snuggie® regalia. We even give out prizes at our booth: an actual Snuggie® to oh-so-lucky attendees, who, when they win, always say the same thing: “I’ve never won ANYTHING before!!!”

So, in this virtual trade show environment with virtual booths, a virtual networking lounge, and virtual CLE sessions, I added Bessie the Cow as a company representative.  She would go into the networking lounge and say “Mooooooooo!”.  We’d have her go into other vendors booths and ask if she could eat their virtual plants.  We were having a grand old time, the attendees loved it, thought it was hilarious, and all sorts of people started engaging Bessie.  She was the hit of the first couple of Virtual LegalTechs.

This greatly annoyed other vendors, who like us, paid a lot of dough to the Virtual LegalTech people for their virtual booths. First, they were mean to Bessie.  “Shoo Bessie!  Go away!” wrote one vendor when Bessie hung out in their booth. Bessie sniffed, whimpered, and sulked off.

Or so we thought.  It turns out there’s a bug in the Virtual LegalTech software where sometimes people get “stuck” in a booth.  You visit a booth, you leave, visit other booths, but the vendors in the first booth you visited will just see you sitting there, for hours on end, crashing their booth like an irritating house guest overstaying their welcome.  As it turns out, Bessie got stuck in the booth of the vendor that despised her the most.

Enter the Virtual LegalTech police.  They started calling us, telling us to “keep the cow out of the lounge and get Bessie out of the XYZ’s booth – other vendors are getting angry.”  At first it was kind of funny, and we restricted Bessie’s usage.  We laughed about it.  Ha ha ha.  Every once in a while we’d duck into the lounge and say “Moooooo!”  But the complaints still kept coming and it ceased to be funny.

We felt solidarity with Bessie and that her rights were being violated.  After all, who hasn’t been to a trade show without seeing some guy dressed up like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, or some other kind of costume?

What’s with the virtual bovine discrimination, people?

To the other Virtual LegalTech vendors who complained, how about instead of whining to the Virtual LegalTech police that we upstaged you, make it fun.  At the next all day session on December 14th, bring it.  ‘Cause Bessie will be back and she’s gonna eat your plants.

Look, I’m aware that we operate at the boundaries of legal technology marketing.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Our product is disruptive to legal technology and our messaging, including our cow, should be as well.