Richard Susskind's Tomorrow's Lawyers.

Four years ago, Richard Susskind published the first edition of “Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future.” With the rapid changes in the legal profession, tomorrow is now today.

The second edition of “Tomorrow's Lawyers” focuses more sharply on how artificial intelligence, alternative business structures, low-cost law firm service centers, legal tech startups and evolving in-house roles are changing the way legal services are delivered and how law schools are educating students to meet those changes.

To that end, ALM during October is publishing excerpts across several of our brands from the second edition to spark thought and conversation about the industry's future among the legal profession's leaders. ALM editors and reporters have solicited reactions—positive and negative—to Susskind's ideas from law firm chairs, top legal educators, general counsel, law students and industry analysts to get their take.

Gabrielle Orum Hernández spoke with the legal tech community to get their views on Susskind's thoughts on document automation and connectivity. That piece can be read here. From Susskind's book:

Document Automation

These systems, as described in Chapter 3, generate relatively polished and customized first drafts of documents, in response to questions asked of their users. Much of the early work in this field, in the 1980s, was devoted to systems that could generate wills. Since then, the same technology has been applied in far more ambitious contexts such as the production of loan documentation for large-​scale banking transactions. Document automation can therefore be used within legal businesses or made available online, and is disruptive for lawyers who charge for their time, because it enables documents to be generated in minutes whereas, in the past, they would have taken many hours to craft.

Not quite as sophisticated as full-​scale automated document assembly systems are those online services that provide users with basic document templates. This was the original business of LegalZoom, a US-​based company that makes legal documents available to citizens and businesses who cannot afford lawyers or wish to spend less (and here is the disruption) on their legal issues. LegalZoom and its main competitor, Rocket Lawyer, have now served many millions of customers and their brands are better known in the US than most law firms. In a similarly disruptive manner, one UK-​headquartered company, Epoq, provides systems and templates that enable banks and insurance companies to provide online services (including document production) to their own clients.

Relentless Connectivity

This refers to systems that together prevent lawyers from entirely disengaging from their clients and the workplace. The technologies include handheld devices, tablets, wireless broadband access, high definition video conferencing, instant messaging, social media, and email; all bolstered by increasing processing power and storage capacity. When these technologies combine, and the machines (of whatever kind) are switched on, which seems now to be all of the time, the 'presence' of lawyers is increasingly visible to their network of contacts. In turn, clients and colleagues will have and expect to have immediate access to lawyers. This can be disruptive for the working and social lives of lawyers. It is a sobering thought too that we seem destined to become more and not less connected, so that the disruption of relentless connectivity is likely to intensify rather than diminish.

Excerpted with permission from Tomorrow's Lawyers by Richard Susskind. For more information, click here.