196

The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services

Richard Susskind
Oxford University Press, 2008; 303 pages (including index)
ISBN 978-0-19-954172-0.

‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’ is the text of a telegram that

Mark Twain is said to have sent from London to the New York Journal after
it had mistakenly published his obituary. Much the same comment might
be made of Mr Susskind’s new book, as his enthusiasm for technology may
have run ahead of reality.
Mr Susskind’s thesis is that ‘conventional legal advisers will be much less
prominent in society than today and, in some walks of life, will have no
visibility at all. This, I believe, is where we will be taken by two forces: by a
market pull towards commoditisation and by pervasive development and
uptake of information technology. Commoditisation and IT will shape and
characterise 21st century legal service’. Susskind identifies ten ‘disruptive
legal technologies’, which will directly challenge and sometimes even replace
the traditional work of lawyers. In the future, Susskind contends, many of
the legal services currently provided by law firms will instead be provided
through new systems driven by technological innovations. The demand for
trusted legal advice delivered by law firms will considerably diminish, and
there will be fewer ‘traditional’ lawyers as a result.
And in many respects he is correct. Anyone who started in the law in
the early 1980s, when the height of legal technology was a Wang word
processor, will be aware of the dramatic changes that technology has had on
the practice of law – and no doubt will continue to have. But to date, the
impact of technology has been on the law firm’s ‘back office’. Its effect has
been to improve the efficiency of law firms, rather than to change in any
fundamental way the relationship between the lawyer and his or her client.
Susskind argues that the disruptive legal technologies that he has identified
will fundamentally affect the way in which legal services are delivered.
In very many cases, these technologies will enable clients to obtain
legal services without the need to interact with a qualified lawyer. Instead,
computerised systems – intelligently programmed – will dispense advice,
draft documents and even adjudicate disputes. It does not require much
imagination to envisage a future system which would be accessed by clients
through the internet. The client would complete a sophisticated online
questionnaire, and the system, by using the answers to the questions and
a precedent bank, would generate a tailored agreement for the client
to use (share purchase, product distribution – ‘whatever’). This kind of
system (automated document assembly) is one of Susskind’s ten disruptive
Book Reviews 197

technologies. These technologies will generate new kinds of legal work

for lawyers who will work with computer programmers in developing and
maintaining these systems. Conversely, there will be a reduced need for the
traditional lawyer working in an office, who takes his client’s instructions
and drafts the contract.
But Susskind does not venture to consider what happens to the ‘outputs’
of these legal technologies. What will be the reaction of the ‘other side’ to
the agreement that the automated system has generated? Will it be accepted
without question by the counterparty, or will it be reviewed (and amended)
by the counterparty’s lawyers before being sent back? It is difficult to see
how technology can replace a human lawyer’s review of a draft contract, or
the legal input into the negotiations that take place between parties before
they reach a final agreement.
Susskind may well be right in many of his predictions. But, for this reader
at least, it took a cold towel and a pot of black coffee to get through this
book’s liberal use of jargon, which makes the book a turgid read. Was it worth
the effort? It certainly was. Although criticisms can be made of Susskind’s
arguments, the book does make you think and is a worthwhile contribution
to the debate about the impact of technology on the law, and the future role
of the legal profession.
Nicholas Aleksander
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, London