Living Through a Paradigm Shift

The initial two paragraphs of Richard Susskind’s newest book, Tomorrow’s Lawyers, are perhaps the boldest and most confident of any commentator currently writing on the legal industry:

This book is a short introduction to the future for young and aspiring lawyers.

Tomorrow’s legal world, as predicted and described here, bears little resemblance to that of the past. Legal institutions and lawyers are at a crossroads, I claim, and are poised to change more radically over the next two decades than they have over the last two centuries. If you are a young lawyer, this revolution will happen on your watch.

Susskind is a British author, lawyer, and technology expert who was working in the legal industry in the mid-1980s when he completed his PhD at Oxford. His dissertation examined the unexplored terrain between law and computers. For the last 20 years, Susskind has been describing the future to a disbelieving and often dyspeptic audience of lawyers.

To continue reading, download the full PDF available here.