This session will be webcast from Boston on AALL2go (member login required).
Tomorrow's Legal Marketplace
What future role will lawyers and legal information professionals play in an IT-based information society? Suggesting that the global recession has brought about an irreversible change to the legal market – one that will define the next decade of legal service – Richard Susskind will explain why and how some (but not all) legal services will become commoditized. Susskind will introduce two concepts – decomposing and multi-sourcing – that he believes will underpin the work of tomorrow’s lawyers. He will then explore the role that information technology and the internet will play in transforming legal service, improving our courts, and improving access to justice. Susskind argues that these transformations present a fundamental challenge for everyone who works in the legal marketplace. Tomorrow’s legal marketplace will be very different from today’s, leading Susskind to pose two questions: 1) What are we training our young lawyers to become? and 2) What jobs will there be for legal professionals in the future? In answering this last question, Susskind will outline a series of exciting new job opportunities for legal information professionals.
Professor Richard Susskind, OBE, is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to major professional firms, in-house legal departments, and national governments. His main area of expertise is the future of legal service, with particular reference to information technology. Since 1988, he has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England of Wales. He is President of the Society for Computers and Law and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Oxford University Internet Institute. He holds professorships at Oxford University; University College, London; Gresham College, London; and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Richard lectures internationally and has been invited to speak in more than 40 countries and has addressed audiences (in person and electronically), numbering more than 250,000. He has written and edited numerous books, including Expert Systems in Law (OUP, 1987), The Future of Law (OUP, 1996), Transforming the Law (OUP, 2000), The End of Lawyers? (OUP, 2008), Tomorrow’s Lawyers (OUP, forthcoming). He has written well over 100 columns for The Times, and his work has been translated into 10 languages. Richard has a law degree from the University of Glasgow and a doctorate in law and computers from Balliol College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Computer Society, and was awarded an OBE in the Millennium New Year's Honours List for services to IT in the Law and to the Administration of Justice.
