DEFYING sceptics, the Banking Legal Technology (BLT) Group continues to forge ahead. In 2003, this informal association of nine global banks invited five City law firms to set up a knowledge portal — a single, private, online repository, containing the combined newsletters, briefings, updates and other information resources of these firms. There are now 18 banks in the group with more than 3,000 registered users, and chairmanship has passed from Deutsche Bank to Barclays Capital. The other members are ABN Amro, Bank of America, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, CSFB, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland, StanChart and UBS Investment Bank. This collective has colossal purchasing power and intends to invite up to ten additional law firms (mainly US) to join the original five (Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters and Simmons & Simmons). BLT’s significance lies less in the knowledge portal than in the community of clients being established. These clients will soon find that, together, they can secure legal services in new and much improved ways. More, using wikis and other emerging technologies, they will come to share insight and even syndicate legal guidance. And other sectors will follow suit.

ASPIRING legal technologists should pack two recent books for the beach. The first is A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink (www.cyanbooks.com), who argues that the power base in society is shifting from the lawyers, computer programmers and number crunchers of the information age, whose work will be automated or outsourced to more empathetic, big-picture individuals who will dominate the impending “conceptual age”. Much weightier (in bulk and substance) is The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (www.penguin.com). This explores the future of humanity, prompted by staggering advances in computation, genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. The main lesson is about the pace of technology change — those who assert that BlackBerry machines and Google are the last word in IT should know that far more powerful technologies are on the way.

The author lectures and consults internationally. He is IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Honorary Professor at Gresham College. He can be contacted through www.susskind.com

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