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52 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | F A L L 2 0 2 1 E X T R A S Volunteering – The Best ILTA Benefit by Mike Viscito T here are a lot of benefits that come along with your membership in ILTA. Some of these you may use regularly, like the online Community boards and publications. I'd suggest that the best benefit of your membership may be something you have not yet taken advantage of, and that is the opportunity to volunteer. Volunteering for ILTA, as in many other organizations, is a position of service and there are a wide range of responsibilities and time commitments. Groups of volunteers are organized around common tasks and have a limited term of service. Event planning teams are responsible for putting on large annual events, like ILTACON and LegalSec. Content planning teams work year round to create the webinars, publications and podcasts that deliver important information to our members. Others take part in 'task forces', which advance important initiatives for our organization. Examples of these groups are the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and the Volunteer Leadership Task Force. Our Board of Directors, which looks at long-term strategic goals and conducts operational work associated with maintaining our organization, is composed of volunteers from our membership. If serving in these positions means a sacrifice of time and effort, how is volunteering a benefit? While there are many benefits to volunteering, here are some of the biggest reasons that you always get more than you give: Your network of legal technology professionals will vastly expand. Just about every volunteer position for ILTA means working with your peers from other law firms and corporate legal departments. "Peers" is a term that may mean different things to different people, so to clarify here it means other legal technology professionals. Other professional associations may align along very specific job roles: IT Operations, Business Development, Marketing, Information Governance, etc. Others may be even more specific down to a specific solution like user group for platforms like Sharepoint or Office 365. There's a lot of value in taking part in these groups and diving very deep into your area of expertise, but to grow and advance professionally it's

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