For the last six weeks or so, The Times has been serialising Professor Richard Susskind's forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? It has created a fair bit of comment online, and the final extract - in which Richard responds to some of his critics - has just appeared.
I haven't read the book but all my experience tells me that he is right about the challenges affecting the legal profession. I was bowled over when I first came across his views at the SCL Annual Lecture he gave in 2006 entitled: "The Next Ten Years". This was the first time that I had heard expressing what I had actually been thinking and in a way that matches up with reality.
As a niche practitioner working in the IT/IP field, it seemed clear both then and now that most law firms, and the lawyers working for them are largely unaware of what is going on in the world of technology, and more often that not, they are resistant to inevitable change.
I am not talking about the rise of email (considered relatively avant garde when LloydLaw started 10 years ago) nor IM (Instant Messaging) nor Blackberrys. I am talking about using the available technology in the interests of society and the profession so that everyone can benefit. If that means, we need fewer lawyers, or lawyers of a different type then the profession needs to address those issues. At the moment, it isn’t really happening.
The fact is that providing services in the way they are being provided is simply too cumbersome and too expensive. And I don't just mean that it's expensive for clients either. It's expensive for lawyers to run profitable law firms that provide their clients with the quality of service that is required. That, of course, is where technology can and does make a difference. As Professor Susskind says, in his final extract:
Open-minded lawyers, and those who genuinely care about the interests of their clients should, in the internet age, continually be looking at ways in which IT can play a more prominent role in their services.
He highlights disruptive technologies such as document assembly, personalised alerting, online dispute resolution, and open-sourcing some of which already exist in various forms, and others which have some way to go. I would also add that both the training of lawyers and the way the profession is both operated and run needs to change to reflect the world we are living in.
Of course, the answer to his (rhetorical) question “The End of Lawyers?” is that there will be no end, but new beginnings. Whether it will be what he describes as multi-disciplinary "hybrid" advisers, I don't quite know, but rest assured the changes are coming.
