Writing in NLJ this week, Ian McDougall, president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, reviews Richard Susskind’s anniversary edition and says the book did not truly predict lawyers’ extinction; it predicted their ‘re-description’.
Susskind correctly saw legal complexity overwhelming traditional, hourly-billed advice, email becoming routine, and a shift from reactive problem-solving to preventive risk management. But the timetable and technology were wrong: rule-based expert systems stalled and the ‘latent legal market’ remained stubbornly elusive.
Generative AI has now brought low-cost first drafts of legal reasoning within reach, McDougall argues, while creating new roles and sharpening questions about oversight. Lawyers will not disappear, but those defined by tasks machines can match may struggle; judgment and managing genuine uncertainty become their value.
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