Tomorrow's Lawyers : An Introduction to your Future 3rd ed

In its first and second editions, Tomorrow's Lawyers became an international bestseller, widely read and cited by practitioners and students. The third edition focuses on the law and lawyers in the 2020s. For Richard Susskind, the future of legal service is neither Grisham nor Rumpole.

Instead, he predicts a world of online courts, AI-based global legal businesses, disruptive legal technologies, liberalized markets, commoditization, alternative sourcing, simulated practice on the metaverse, and many new legal jobs. This volume is a definitive and updated introduction to this future - for aspiring lawyers, and for all who want to modernize and upgrade our legal and justice systems. It offers practical guidance for everyone intending to build careers and businesses in law.

Written in an era of greater technological advance than humanity has ever witnessed, this work is a call to arms: it challenges those who feel that the law and lawyers are somehow immune from technological advance; it draws attention to the unaffordability and inaccessibility of legal service, for businesses and citizens alike; it invites the next generation of lawyers to harness the power of technology in improving and even overhauling the way in which legal and court service is currentlyprovided. Tomorrow's Lawyers identifies new opportunities for lawyers, new ways of helping clients and the community. It enjoins its readers to become involved in building the systems that will replace outmoded forms of legal work.

It argues that it is both a privilege and an obligation for tomorrow's lawyers to embrace and bring about change. A must-read for legal undergraduates, aspiring and young lawyers, senior practitioners, leaders in law firms and legal businesses, law professors and law teachers.

Table of Content

PART 1: RADICAL CHANGES IN THE LEGAL MARKET

1: Three drivers of change

2: Strategies for success

3: Commoditizing the law

4: Working differently

5: Disruptive legal technologies

 

PART TWO: THE NEW LANDSCAPE

6: The future for law firms

7: The role for in-house lawyers

8: The timing of the changes

9: Access to justice and online legal services

10: Judges, IT, and virtual courts

11: Online dispute resolution

12: 'The Future of Law' revisited

 

PART THREE: PROSPECTS FOR NEW LAWYERS

13: New jobs for lawyers

14: Who will employ young lawyers

15: Training lawyers for what?

16: Replacing the old training ground

17: Questions to ask employers

18: Artificial intelligence and the long term