Bracton Law Lecture, University of Exeter, 30 November 2011 - Professor Richard Susskind OBE
Access to justice, legal education, and 21st century legal service - Outline of lecture
Overview
The legal world is changing rapidly and profoundly. In years to come, legal services will be delivered in new ways, not least across the Internet. Online legal services hold the promise of greatly increasing access to justice. The next generation of lawyers will need to work, and be trained, quite differently if the legal profession is to remain relevant.
21st Century legal service
Lawyers are currently being driven by four main pressures:
- the delivery of more legal service at less cost (‘more for less’)
- the move from bespoke service to standardized and systematized work
- the liberalization of legal services, and so new competitors in the market
- the transformational effect across society of IT and the Internet
In response, legal work (deals and disputes) will come to be decomposed (broken down into more basic tasks); the market will require individual tasks to be sourced most efficiently (by a combination of outsourcing, off-shoring, sub-contracting, computerization, use of paralegals, and more).
The Internet and IT will play a major role in bringing about change. Almost every industry and sector is being radically changed by existing and emerging technologies; there is no rational reason to think lawyering might be exempt from IT-based change.
