Richard Susskind has recently published a short paper arguing people don’t want professionals, they want solutions and answers. The paper then criticises professions for being more concerned with themselves than the people they serve. All in all, there is little wrong with this except the hoped for outcome–an outcomes-based set of professionals–won’t happen. Susskind is first and foremost a lawyer and a technologist. He isn’t a sociologist which is why I forgive him his…

After receiving many kind comments on our paper, “Professions and Expertise: How Machine Learning and Blockchain Are Redesigning the Landscape of Professional Knowledge and Organisation”, I have substantially revised it and put the new version on SSRN. I want to thank in particular Professor Laurel Terry of the Dickinson Law School at Penn State University. I hadn’t realised how many convoluted sentences I’d written until she pointed them out and she came through with…

(thanks to giant bomb.com) I’m sure PwC, EY, KPMG, and Deloitte would like to be thought of the same way as these bands, but…dream on. Why are they there? A press release from Karl Chapman popped into my overstuffed mailbox saying Riverview Law has just been acquired by EY. Despite the hype of press releases, this is a significant move in the legal services market. At bottom it shows two things: NewLaw is coming…

(thanks to rechtspraak.nl) It can be a harsh world in the world of courts today. Competition is intensifying. Courts not only have to pay their way, they now have to face challenge from equivalent courts in foreign jurisdictions. What might have been a cosy sinecure in the past is now cold and clinical. International arbitration is the prototypical competitive scene as Stockholm, Paris, New York, and London slug it out for disputes. Countries pass legislation…

I’ve been reading about my sociology PhD supervisor, Howie Becker. He’s big in France, which is weird because he’s the antithesis of theoretical. Unlike Bourdieu, Becker isn’t sterile and formulaic. Instead he asks questions about how something is done. There’s a rather nice article about him in the New Yorker, which for the English among you would be like being featured on Desert Island Discs. The reason for bringing up Howie is because…

(thanks to meinhardtgroup.com) This is a picture of Hong Kong Science Park in the New Territories. It’s a tremendous place and I visited it in October while visiting at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. I had gone to see a blockchain startup there, but the visit made me think about why there were no law startups or businesses in the park. My thoughts here, then, relate to a legal education conference …