Join us for the

2026 ALAMN Annual Education Conference

Tuesday, September 22

at the Hilton Hotel – Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport location

2026 ALAMN Education Conference - Member, Non-Member, and Student Registration

2026 ALAMN Education Conference - Business Partner Registration

2026 Conference Schedule

9:15 - 10:00: Registration + Early Bird Bingo

10:00 - 11:00: Keynote - Know Your Worth: How to Negotiate for Everything You Want in Life and Work
Dr. Meg Meyers Morgan

Negotiation isn't just for boardrooms and big deals. In this dynamic talk, Dr. Morgan reveals how negotiation is a vital everyday skill-and how anyone can master it to improve outcomes in work and life. The insightful and laugh-out-loud talk focuses on building confidence, achieving clarity in communication and goals, and navigating conflict with calm and strategy. Through real-world examples and practical techniques, attendees learn how to advocate for themselves effectively, create win-win solutions, and turn difficult conversations into opportunities for growth and collaboration.

11:00 - 12:00: Exhibit Hall with Business Partners

12:00 - 1:00: Lunch Buffet and Exhibit Hall with Business Partners

1:00 - 2:00: Breakout Sessions

2:00 - 3:00: Exhibit Hall with Business Partners

3:00 - 4:00: Breakout Sessions

4:15 - 5:30: Happy hour

Breakout Sessions - 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Meeting Facilitation – Stop Wasting Everyone’s Time: How to Run Meetings That Actually Work
Affinity Consulting – A Mille Lacs Business Partner

The average professional spends a third of their week in meetings – and most of them are theater. This session gives legal administrators a practical facilitation toolkit for every meeting type they run, from weekly standups to strategic brainstorms to working workshops. Attendees leave with formats, frameworks, and facilitation moves they can use immediately.

Learning Objectives:

Distinguish between meeting types and apply the right structure to each;
Use at least three facilitation techniques to increase engagement and decision quality;
Design a recurring meeting cadence that reduces time while improving outcomes.

Stop Chasing Remittances: Modernizing Law Firm AR with Integrated Receivables
UMB – A Mille Lacs Business Partner

Every day, law firms lose valuable administrative hours to a silent revenue killer: payment fragmentation. Clients pay via ACH, wire, check and credit card, while remittance details sit buried in separate emails, portals, and paper envelopes. Staff spend hours manually matching payments to invoices, stalling cash flow, and driving up Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

Join financial technology experts from UMB Bank and FIS for an interactive, educational breakout session. Discover how top-tier law firms use Integrated Receivables to solve the AR puzzle, automate the back office, and accelerate cash flow.

Learning Objectives:

Unify the Chaos: Consolidate all incoming payment channels into one digital stream.
Leverage Financial AI: See how advanced FIS machine learning extracts data from complex legal billing portals.
Connect any Law Firm ERP: Interface seamlessly with your exiting billing platforms including Elite, Clio, Aderant and others.
Eliminate Manual Matching: Achieve straight-thought processing directly into your firm’s practice management software.
Accelerate Cash Flow: Learn UMB Bank’s practical strategies to reduce DSO and eliminate unapplied cash.

The Legal Talent Playbook: Hiring and Compensation Trends for 2027
Robert Half Legal – A Itasca Business Partner

This session explores key 2026 labor market insights, including how AI adoption, evolving business priorities and persistent skills gaps are reshaping how law firms recruit, evaluate and retain talent.

We will highlight in-demand roles and skill sets across legal support and operations, along with strategies to address hiring challenges and strengthen talent pipeline. Drawing from Robert Half’s 2027 Salary Guide, it also provides a data-driven look at compensation trends, including starting salaries, benefits and incentives to support more informed hiring and retention decisions.

Learning Objectives:

Understand key labor market trends including the impact of AI and ongoing talent shortages.
Identify strategies to address skills gaps, candidate scarcity and rising salary expectations.
Apply practical approaches to upskilling and how to align hiring with long-term organizational goals.

Breakout Sessions - 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.

The Performance Paradox – Navigating the Tensions of Peak Performance and Wellness
Kara Hardin – Founder of The Practice Lab, a mental health educator, Registered Psychotherapist, and former corporate and securities lawyer. Kara is a national speaker focusing on peak performance across industries.

Against the background of the unpredictable and demanding business landscape, associates strive both to produce excellent work and to feel well. They jockey between feeling exhilaration and depletion, telling themselves, “it will be better after this next thing passes” over and over again, only to find themselves on the other side of the last matter, striving just as hard on another one. At the heart of peak performance is a paradox: The qualities that can help us succeed, can also make us feel unwell.

This session explores the tensions between feeling well and achieving, offering practical takeaways and thought-provoking ideas that lead towards fulfillment and clarity in practice and life outside of work.

Learning Objectives:

Learn the Principles of Peak Performance: Identify the difference between getting things done and peak performing in the context of the demands of legal practice (client service) and legal business development.
Understand your Stress Response: Learn how the brain and body react under uncertainty, reflecting and identifying specific reaction patterns to stress.
Regulate in Real Time: Build practical skills to calm the nervous system, regain clarity, and respond instead of react to the endless demands of legal practice.
Shift your Relationship with Work: Explore practices for the moments when you, a colleague or a loved one are struggling with overwhelm, anxiety, dread, low motivation, feelings of loneliness and being stuck.

Cybersecurity – Banking & Law Firms
BMO Commercial Bank – An Introductory Business Partner Sponsor

Law firms continue to be prime targets for cyber threats due to the sensitive client, financial, and confidential data they manage. These risks directly affect operations, client trust, regulatory compliance and firm reputation, all of which are core concerns for legal management professionals. This cuts across all environments at ALAMN – large and small firms, and corporate/government entities.

Learning Objectives:

Focus on real world scenarios and best practices/tools that attendees can take back to their organization.
The session will be pragmatic and approachable.

Key Moving and Remodeling Trends for Law Firms – A Panel Discussion
Gardner Builders – A Itasca Business Partner Sponsor
Moderated by Bernie Theis

Panel Participants:

Perkins & Will – Law Office Design Drivers, Challenges & Pricing
Fluid Interiors – How Brand Identity & Culture Affect your Furniture
Saul Ewing (Nancy Lewer) – Planning, Outcomes & Lessons Learned
Gardner Builders – Construction, Schedule Considerations, Site Selection, Budget & Constructability

Learning Objectives:

Discussion of the 7-10 year lease cycle and what has changed in recent years.
Shifts in office design – increase in collaborative areas and smaller individual offices.
Premium Spaces - The emphasis on top-tier, modern buildings with amenities to attract talent and impress clients.
Remodeling in Place as an alternative to moving.
Collaboration with strategic partners – why this is important in the early stages of planning.