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The title of my book — The End of Lawyers? — came to me one afternoon, in early 2006, when I sat in great comfort in the ancient and splendid surroundings of the dark- wood-panelled main hall of the Mercers’ Company, in Ironmonger Lane in London.

Founded in 1394, the Mercers is the longest-established instance of a great tradition in the City of London, that of “livery companies”. With origins in ancient trade guilds and, in the early days, focused on regulating their trades, there are now over 100 of these bodies.

Mercers were traders in fine cloths and silks. But the last mercer to become an apprentice with the Mercers did so in 1888; since then, like many other livery companies, the Mercers have supported innumerable charitable causes and educational initiatives.

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It was probably the fine food and wine that emboldened me and fuelled my imagination. I wondered to myself, in an entirely untutored way, about the fate of mercers. I thought about improvements in transportation and communications, the impact of machinery on craftsmen and cottage industries, the emergence of synthetic fibres, the advent of mass-market retailing, and the impact of an ever more influential fashion industry.

And I then thought about other ancient trades and craftsmen, now remembered in London largely because of the livery companies that bear their names — for example, tallow chandlers (who rendered animal fat as candles); cordwainers (who worked with fine leather); and wheelwrights (makers of wheels).

It occurred to me that the fundamental demand for the products of these trades —cloths, candles, wheels — had not diminished; indeed it had often increased. But new technologies, methods of production and innovations had served to displace most of the associated craftsmen.

I reflected upon the legal world and the possible impact of information technology. And I wondered then — and this first thought inspired the title of the book — whether lawyers might fade from society as other craftsmen have done over the centuries.

Perhaps 100 years from now, maybe more or maybe much less, people might sit in fine comfort in some vestige of today’s legal world (perhaps an ancient courtroom refurbished as a restaurant, as some of London’s banks have been repurposed) and, appropriately nourished, speculate in a leisurely manner about solicitors and barristers and advocates and attorneys, in much the same way as I had been musing about various craftsmen of centuries past.

Who exactly were these people, these lawyers? What was their craft? They were involved with the law, of course, but what did they actually do? Why did we need them? How did they contribute? And why do we not have them any more? What brought about the end of lawyers?

This anecdote, as I say, led me to the title of the book. I accept that it is a provocative title. But to provoke the legal community into serious reflection and then into practical action is one of my aims in life.

A common retort by cynics, sceptics, doubters and critics runs simply and as follows: computers cannot replace legal work. Full stop. I will leave to one side the fact that this really is a gross oversimplification of my thesis, in that it ignores what I say about standardisation, commoditisation and the transfer of many legal tasks from lawyers to non-lawyers. But even as a claim only about the impact of technology on lawyers, it is weak. I respond in two parts.

First of all, my interest is manifestly not in some wholesale, monolithic substitution of legal advisers by information technology. Instead my focus, insofar as IT is concerned, is on the extent to which some, much or all of what lawyers do can be undertaken more quickly, more conveniently and less expensively, and in a less forbidding way, by systems than by conventional work.

The question I therefore prefer to ask in this context is: from the clients’ point of view, what tasks of lawyers will be better undertaken in the future by systems?

It is a foolhardy lawyer indeed who unreflectively and dogmatically replies to this question by asserting “none whatsoever”. Open-minded lawyers, and those who genuinely care about the interests of their clients should, in the internet age, continually be looking at ways in which IT can play a more prominent role in their services.

My experience of working with law firms and in-house legal departments leads me to claim that there is remarkable scope for greater and beneficial deployment of technology. I also contend that for some lawyers there are existing and emerging technologies whose widespread adoption will effectively render them redundant. (Much the same has happened in many other sectors; lawyers are not immune from the destructive effects of the internet and IT revolutions.)

I call technologies that threaten the work of today’s lawyers and law firms “disruptive legal technologies”. They do not support or complement current legal practices. They challenge and replace them, in whole or in part.

This leads to the second part of my response to the non-believers. Most of the disruptive technologies that I identify — such as document assembly, personalised alerting, online dispute resolution, and open-sourcing — are phenomena of which most practising lawyers are only dimly aware. (Also bear in mind that my predictions are long-term predictions, stretching to 2016 and beyond.) If lawyers are barely conversant with today’s technologies, they have even less sense of how much progress in legal technology is likely in the coming 10 years.

Politely, it puzzles me profoundly that lawyers who know little about current and future technologies can be so confident about their inapplicability. To be able to claim responsibly that IT will have no or minimal effect of lawyers, as many do, surely requires some considerable depth of insight into what disruptive technologies do and will do in years to come. My purpose in writing my book is precisely to provide that insight.

Richard Susskind is Emeritus Professor of Law at Gresham College, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and consultant to leading law firms. He was awarded an OBE in 2000. This is an extract from his forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. For more information click here

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