Communication: developments that go to 'heart of the legal process coming in the next decade', Susskind tells lawyers
A future of legal services that some may find deeply disquieting was outlined by Professor Richard Susskind at the Society for Computers and Law 2006 lecture in London last week.
Addressing lawyers and other interested parties at the Royal Society, Prof Susskind called for greater openness with legal information, throwing down a gauntlet in the form of the creation of an on-line, collaborative encyclopaedia of English law.
'Why aren't we more ambitious? Why aren't we putting together a multimedia encyclopaedia of English law in the Wikipedia spirit?' he asked. 'Why aren't we hanging [multimedia resources] off legislation and case law, attaching [them] to Bailii (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute) or otherwise?' He said the system could be an enormously valuable resource for all 'for years to come'.
Now that Prof Susskind has been made co-chairman of the IT and the courts committee (ITAC) alongside the judge in charge of modernisation, Lord Justice Neuberger (see [2005] Gazette, 9 March, 11), it seems more likely that such things may come to pass.
There had been successes in line with the predictions he had made ten years ago in his book The Future of Law, Prof Susskind added.
He cited the rise of on-line dispute resolution in the shape of Money Claim Online, calling it the busiest county court in the country. 'This is not science fiction,' he told the audience. 'On-line dispute resolution has arrived.'
But in case this might have left anyone present feeling complacent, Prof Susskind had some stern words for lawyers who feel the worst is over. 'Most lawyers have now got their BlackBerry machines, they Google regularly, and they think they're on their way,' he said. '[But] the really exciting stuff that will go to the heart of legal service, the heart of legal process, is coming in the next decade.'
He pointed to the coming shift from text-based to multimedia communication on-line as one of the key changes that lawyers must heed. 'Lawyers who believe we're still going to be sharing knowledge and advising clients in textual form,' he said, 'miss the point and [will] possibly miss the boat.'
Prof Susskind warned that the legal profession will operate in an increasingly pressured and highly commoditised market - in other words, that a large amount of the services that law firms will offer will be almost indistinguishable, and that offering them on-line will mean it might become almost impossible to charge more than a pittance for them.
'Lawyers are correct about worrying about the economics of commodity pricing,' he warned, 'because when a legal offering becomes a commodity, there's a good chance it's going to have to be given away.' The commercial aim in this scenario, he said, is to 'keep the bar so high that your package cannot be replicated by others'.
Prof Susskind also said that e-filing - submitting documents to courts electronically - should become the norm within a decade. This may sound futuristic, but the reality is that there are European countries light years ahead of the UK in this respect.
Other areas to watch, he said, will include major shifts towards e-disclosure, domination by on-line communities and collaboration, and an exponential growth in computing capacity that will mean much greater power on the desktop and in information searching.
Link: www.scl.org
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