Futurology and hindsight are not natural bedfellows. Those bold enough to stick their necks out and predict the shape of things to come – and when they will happen – are rarely keen to encourage retrospective critiques of their vision. The safest career choice for a prophet is to stick to predicting events that will happen after their death.

What distinguishes Professor Richard Susskind from the legions of snake-oil salesmen and dubious experts working in the IT field – apart from the fact that many of his predictions came true – is his willingness to re-examine and re-evaluate his original thinking halfway through.

Much like the prophets of old, Susskind served his time as a lone voice in the wilderness. His early work, on expert systems, met with a mix of incredulity and hostility from some leading practitioners. Nonetheless, he persevered with his message and by the time he convinced a major publisher to print his first book, The Future of Law, in 1995, some of his disciples were already trying to implement his ideas in major law firms. Ten years on, The Future of Law still makes interesting reading.

It describes a 20-year process of radical and irrevocable transformation in the legal sector. Susskind predicts that by 2015 legal services will be largely commoditised and for most commercial purposes clients will get the bulk of their legal advice online from expert systems, maintained and honed to near-perfect reliability by teams of lawyers. In the corporate environment firms will sell their knowledge, first and fore-most, and the traditional hand-holding role played by lawyers will take a back seat. Solicitors at many firms would be faced with tough career choices: go into rainmaking and business development; focus on knowledge-building and support or quality-checking online services; stick to advocacy and representation; or re-train and find a different job. For the run-of-the-mill practitioner the implications of Susskind's vision are uncomfortable at best. For many, there is a real danger of becoming little more than a glorified call-centre operative.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that Susskind was largely right in his prediction that large swathes of legal practice would commoditise, although so far this has been limited to lower-value practice areas, where clients are firmly in the driving seat and most business now goes to bulk processing centres that rely on workflow technology.

But, what about Susskind's most radical idea, that traditional legal services would be replaced by online legal services? Five years ago many firms were actively pursuing knowledge-based initiatives with the express intent of selling legal advice online, but with a few exceptions, including Linklaters' Blue Flag, the first crop of true online legal services have withered on the vine, written off as expensive mistakes. Were their progenitors just jumping the gun or was Suss-kind wrong?

Susskind is sticking to his guns. "The Future of Law was a 20-year prediction and we are only halfway through the cycle," he says. "The rise of online legal services was the most radical prediction in the book and I always said that it would take the longest time to kick in. I would not expect these services to become pervasive for another decade." He argues that many firms are on track for the transformation of their business models, having spent the first 10 years streamlining inefficiencies and getting themselves, their cultures and their infrastructures ready for changes to their business model. "The leading firms are only just beginning to get to the heart of these issues," he says.

Looking back over the past five years, which is roughly the period when most firms have been trying to implement his ideas, Susskind has identified three pervasive and primary drivers for change in the legal sector: the internet, client demand and competitors. The role of the internet is obvious according to Suss-kind: without e-mail many lawyers would still not bother to switch on their computers; the BlackBerry has changed lawyers' working culture; and Google has given them a whole new window on the world.

Client demand for technology-related services has moved up the agenda, Susskind says. Between 1995 and 2000 clients were very hesitant about technology. But the past five years have seen them beginning to put the systems in place and formulate their own IT strategies. In this regard they are perhaps five years behind major law firms, where solicitors are now far better equipped to do their jobs efficiently.

Now that leading clients have their IT platforms in place, they are looking for ways to exploit them – and in some cases they are working together. Susskind cites the portal system set up by the 'banking legal technology group'. "I would not mind betting that there is some seriously substantive stuff on there now," he says.

If client demand is emerging as a strong driver, law firms are even more strongly driven by what their competitors are doing, Susskind says, and this is most apparent in London. "In the field of client technology Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Linklaters are among the most advanced firms in the world," he says. "It is no coincidence that they are all based in the same market. This is why client technologies from the London firms are more impressive than those offered by firms on Wall Street."

Competition, or the lack of it, is also the key to understanding why the top end of the legal market has not taken any major steps towards commoditisation, Susskind says. "The top 30 firms are doing very nicely, so where is the motivation for them to change?" Only strong pressure from clients or an over-whelming commercial opportunity will kick-start the process.

It has not all gone Susskind's way, however. The events of September 11 and the ensuing changes to the social, political and business climate brought about a radical change in law firms' strategic plans. Firms' focus on disaster recovery and risk management may well have set back his cycle by several years. Many firms simply gave up on knowledge management and the development of client systems while they shored up their own businesses. While this trend may now be reversing, Susskind is aware that his own cycle is just part of a bigger picture. "The aspects of technology that I go on about have never been more than a miniscule part of law firms' expenditure," he says. That may be, but they continue to influence the evolution of the legal profession.