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Are Lawyers Going to Become Obsolete?

Justin Patten of Human Law writes this post on the future of the legal profession, linking to this provocative series by Richard Susskind on the legal profession on the brink of change. Susskind's aim is:

to explore the extent to which the role of the traditional lawyer can be sustained in coming years in the face of challenging trends in the legal marketplace and new techniques for the delivery of legal services.

Susskind considers whether we have reached a point such that a lawyer's job can be carved up and either handled by computer or outsourced. Patten doesn't take a position, but does acknowledge that technology will impact law firms in ways not yet contemplated.

Susskind urges lawyers to familiarize themselves with new technology. In his view, lawyers who don't evolve and leverage technology and find ways to make themself useful in spite of it may be on their way out.

Posted by Carolyn Elefant on October 23, 2007 at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

lawyers will be. obsolete.
or tech-based.

1. all law now free on internt.
u.s.c. c.f.r. all branches of government have law posted for free on internet.

2. all courts post their opinions online. e-filing e-courtroom.

3. all large law firms, law schools, have webpages.

4. cell phones. computer, internet have made legal services compete on a u.s. and global basis.

5. cell phones, computers, email, yahoo, google have obsoleted constraints of time-space.

6. most lawyers are science, tech, computer, il-literate. they do not know what a computer-internet.

7. lawyers are going way of stock-brokers, agents.

8. internet will become universal middleman for all access to a. knowledge, google all the facts of the world, facts of the world.
b. unviversal accesss to markets to buy, sell, trade.

9. moore's law... computing power doubles about 24 months.

10.. fiber optics. all data travels at the speed of light, the ultimate speed of the universe.

11. 1-billion computers in world. soon to be 2-billion.

12. 2-billion cell phones in world. soon to be 4-billion

Posted by: josh stein | Mar 8, 2008 9:46:43 AM

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