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23 April 2009
Issue: 7366 / Categories: Features
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Book reviews: The End of Lawyers?

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The End of Lawyers?

Richard Susskind

Oxford University Press, £24.99, ISBN: 9780199541720

Richard Susskind has earned a great reputation as the leading expert in the computerisation of law. His latest book has wider ambitions: it marks the development of his thinking towards a comprehensive evaluation of the place of lawyers in society, especially in its economic aspects. Yet it remains grounded in his interest in the use of technology to aid and even replace the human element.

His thoughtful analysis almost overcomes my prejudice against his approach. Nostalgia for the shabby, sociable offices of my youth dims my appreciation of the mechanised efficiencies of modern commercial culture. I like to think I am in a caring profession not a business.

Yet reality must be confronted. Susskind's focus, and indeed his experience, is in the world of the large solicitors' firms and their corporate clients, many of whom employ in-house lawyers as well as outside firms. The revolution in speed and cost of communication has stripped away much of the mystery with

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Newcastle & North of England Law Society—Lesley Fairclough

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