Legal It Insider reports on his latest comments.
Professor Richard Susskind says that the stiffest new competitor to law firms is an AI-empowered client, in reflections on a year that showed new promise as to how to crack the huge access to justice problem via non-expert, tech-enabled providers. This article first appeared in the November/December Orange Rag newsletter
According to Professor Richard Susskind, author of books including The End of Lawyers; Tomorrow’s Lawyers, and The Future of the Professions, there are three key takeaways from 2023, following technological advances that he described recently as “the most remarkable developments in my 40 years.”
Susskind, who advises professional firms, general counsel and the judiciary on technology trends and developments, has for decades been at the forefront of driving UK legal sector preparedness for AI developments.
He says that for the first time, technology has become a board level issue, not as an operational issue, but as a strategic issue, commenting: “The board has talked for years about things like ‘we’re getting a new practice management system’ and ‘what does it cost?’ However, generative AI means that we’re seeing the development of systems that will take over the work of lawyers. I spend a lot of my time with managing partners and speaking to boards, and for the first time they recognise that this is not a back office operational issue, but it will affect the future of legal services.”
The second takeaway from 2023, Susskind says, is that there is a great under appreciation in the marketplace that ChatGPT and generative AI is just one new chapter in an ongoing story. He says: “We’re still at the foothills. Although we’re seeing a huge level of activity and interest both in our exploitation of the technology and in the evolution of AI, it’s still very early days.”
The third point, which Susskind says is the biggest, is that while the focus of most lawyers has been on how AI affects productivity, there are longer term, more existential questions to be answered. “The real key to AI, not just in law, is how it will empower non-experts to do the work of experts. In law, we are beginning to see how we might crack the access to justice problem. We can also see that the new, stiffest competitor to a law firm is an AI-empowered client,” he said.
“If the technology evolves as I expect, it will enable organisations to do a lot of work themselves, so a lot of the work that is done by law firms will be done internally.”
Read all his comments at
Richard Susskind: “The market will show no loyalty to the traditional way of working”
