This last week I’ve just started reading “Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future” by Richard Susskind. It’ll take me a while as I tend to have a few books on the go at once and this one will only get a look in on my commute in between reading the Metro and re-watching the WestWing on my phone! But as I’ve just finished part one I thought I’d write up some thoughts.

For those that are unfamiliar with Richard Susskinds works, he basically points to radical changes in the legal market and has been future gazing in this way for some years. In fact I recently bought his 1996 book “The Future of Law” off eBay, this was the year I started in Legal IT and I’m intrigued to look back to what he predicted then and compare it to the journey I’ve been through within Legal IT over the last 17 years, but that’s a post for another day.

The first part of this latest book really sets the scene of what is to come in the later two parts. The first five chapters that make up part one are as follows:

• Three drivers of change
• Strategies for success
• Commoditizing the law
• Working differently
• Disruptive legal technologies

The “three drivers of change” are the drive to cut costs, the changing legal model (ABS etc) and IT. It’s hard to argue against any of these, it’s just what will be the rate of change and how big a change will it be. The second chapter I thought was very interesting, low costs and alternative fees were discussed as “no brainers” and the chapter moved to how firms will need to work very differently. The final three chapters expand on what he sees as the options; to build an efficiency and collaboration strategy, the only viable strategies that he sees for law firms to remain competitive.

It’s interesting reading the first part how far from this vision a lot of law firms are, seemingly concentrating on cost cutting and alternative fees alone as they strive to keep profits high (example, “Eversheds set to cut up to 166 jobs in latest redundancy round“).

Although I don’t necessarily agree with everything Richard Susskind predicts for law firms, I do agree that the winds of change are blowing through the industry. And the more stories like the front page on today’s Metro paper (see below) hit the mainstream media, the more outsiders will see a huge opportunity to deliver legal services in new, customer benefiting ways!

 Metro newspaper