Legal technologist Richard Susskind created a huge buzz among attendees of last week’s ABA Techshow with his keynote speech about the future of the legal profession. Susskind’s latest book, “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” foretells radical changes to business of law, including a commoditization of nearly every aspect of legal services aside from a lawyer’s own expert judgment.
According to Susskind, in order to meet client demands of “more for less,” lawyers will have to become much more efficient, which they’ll do through commoditization of legal work and “multi-sourcing” (breaking up a legal matter into many pieces which are handled by different providers). They must also, says Susskind, learn to collaborate through community-based sharing of legal knowledge. Online social networking, he predicts, will dominate legal services.
Lawyers of the future will be project managers and risk managers, not “expert trusted advisors” as they’re thought of today. Rather than frame his predictions with gloom and doom, Susskind emphasized that we’re not near “the end of lawyers” but in a time of tremendous opportunity for those willing to innovate and approach work differently.
A free video of Susskind’s keynote will be posted soon on the ABA Techshow website.