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It has finally happened. Reading something that annoys me enough to make me register to comment. Many others have already said how deluded Susskind, but who invited him to speak at the Law Society? We do seem to be giving him airspace - is it because we need to have a think about technology, or because we want someone to laugh at? The latter is of course unethical, but the former is worth conisderation. We do need to consider technology and how it can help both the profession and clients (artificial intelligence in law, well, I won't start worrying about that yet....).

Technology is nothing new, and never one to shy away from shoehorning my PhD into every conversation, there are similarities between the rise of technology and shipping documentaiton (specifically Electronic Bills of Lading). Attempts have been made since the 1980s to do something about the use of paper in shipping (the ship normally arrives first!). Nothing really worked, but a couple of projects (Bolero and Essdocs) have been going for around 10 years, so not about to disappear. But they do not have a market majority (one website speaks of 3,200 users wordwide - not exactly everyone doing it then), and this is 40 years after the issue arose! Why, because people don't trust technology and prefer paper it seems, even though paper is fraught with difficulty. This article, http://thebalticbriefing.com/2015/03/04/electronic-bills-of-lading-why-its-different-this-time/ albeit written by Essdocs, does chart the course of progress, and interestingly, they are now claiming this time will be different. Time will tell. The Gartner Hype Cycle seems relevant though - Susskind's artifical technology trigger hasn't even happened yet, so I think we have a while yet.