By Shamsa Munir [1]
Abstract:
Richard Susskind has authored the book Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future which is in its 3rd edition and has become an international bestseller. The book is published by Oxford University Press, Oxford. As technology is becoming relevant in the public profession of law and as the artificial intelligence is leading its future pathway, therefore, the book is relevant for legal education in Pakistan as also in all other countries of the world. I have written book review of this wonderful book on the topic for dissemination to a wider audience including law students, lawyers, judges, and legal academics.
Key Words:
Artificial Intelligence, lawtech, future-proofing, The Constitution of Pakistan, access to justice, AI, alternative business structures (ABS), ADR, ODR, Clementi Report (2004), Lord Wolf Report, computer assisted transcription, courts, judges, de-lawyering, digital, document, e-filing, fair trial, law firm, future of law, internet, technology, startup, data science, legislation, mediation, online courts, online legal services, Susskind, drivers of change, judicial training, legal education, trial lawyers, young lawyers.
About the book[2]:
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Publication date : 7 Feb. 2023
Edition : 3rd
Language : English
Print length : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 0192864726
ISBN-13 : 978-0192864727
Item weight : 340 g
Dimensions : 20.29 x 1.47 x 12.8 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 143,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
173 in Vocational
843 in Law (Books)
2,784 in Computing & Internet
What the lawyers of future need to read is a question that can only be answered if one knows what the public profession of law may demand from them. Discussing the future is always predictive. Certainty only arrives when it is coupled with experience. Experience comes with experimentation. Experimentation requires human action. Richard Susskind[3] is a future visionary to guide all of us if we intend to be lawyers of tomorrow. Tomorrow has many new things which we are not experiencing right now but due to incremental change in society, a perpetual phenomenon we anticipate being interacting with. Today, to travel into the future, we will go through an impactful book authored by a leader in law and technology to make ourselves aware of as to what can be the challenges of tomorrow as a law student, a lawyer, a judge, a legal academic, a law researcher, a parliamentarian, a public servant, and so on and so forth.
The book in hand is in its third edition and an international bestseller by the Oxford University Press for tomorrow’s lawyers to introduce them towards the challenges of future. The author, when decided to publish its first edition in the year 2013, has written in preface to the first edition:
“I have written this book to provide tomorrows lawyer and legal educators with an accessible account of the pressing issues that currently face the legal profession and the justice system.”
The author further emphasized the importance of change in the world of law in the following words:
“…We are, I have no doubt, on the brink of fundamental change in the world of law, and my main aim is to encourage wider discussion of the forces at play and their likely impact.”
The book remained in the field for four years when the author published its second edition in the year 2016. This shows that the change in the public profession of law in the previous two decades has been massive and thus the need to bring second edition became relevant to the times. To give a flavor:
“…many major law firms have since setup low cost service centers to undertake routine legal work; the Big 4 accounting firms have rapidly grown their global legal capabilities; there has been a great upsurge of legaltech start-ups, now well over 1,000 worldwide; the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) in law has captured the imagination of innovators across the profession…”
The author went on to highlight the importance of technology in the field of law by mentioning that:
“…senior judges have been strongly advocating the wider use of technology; the British government has committed to investing over £1 billion in modernizing and digitizing the court system in England and Wales … great numbers of leaders across the legal profession are now openly acknowledging that the world of law is entering a period of transformation.”
The book also shows that another revision came in a short span of time in the year 2016, when its third edition was published. The author has again focused on the speedy change being experienced by the profession of law in the following words in Preface to the Third Edition:
“I expect the trajectory of change in law to follow an exponential curve. Over the past decade, we have seen a shallow, steady change and are now seeing signs of more explosive movements. We are at the knee of the curve.”
With the above background to develop the book under review into its third edition, the author has divided the book into three parts, an introduction, a chapter on further readings and an index. To give a snapshot of what important topics are discussed in this book, its table of contents is reproduced as under:
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART ONE Radical Changes in the Legal Market
1. Three Drivers of Change
2. Impact of the Pandemic
3. Strategies for Success
4. Commoditizing the Law
5. Working Differently
6. Disruptive Legal Technologies
7. The Grid
PART TWO The New Landscape
8. The Future for Law Firms
9. The Shifting Role of In-House Lawyers
10. Lawtech Start-ups
11. The Timing of the Changes
12. Access to Justice and Online Legal Services
13. Judges, Courts, and Technology
14. Online Courts and Online Dispute Resolution
15. The Future of Law, Revisited
PART THREE Prospects for Young Lawyers
16. New Jobs for Lawyers
17. Who Will Employ Tomorrow’s Lawyers?
18. Training Lawyers for What?
19. Replacing the Old Training Ground
20. Questions to Ask Employers
21. Innovation
22. Artificial Intelligence and the Long Term
FURTHER READING
INDEX
While reading the book, the author has gained our attention when he writes that “[i]f you are a young lawyer, the revolution I discuss is happening on your watch. ‘Young’ should be construed broadly, applying to students who are contemplating a job at law through to newly promoted partners in firms who are wondering how their careers might unfold.” The author also highlights another challenge for the young law students in terms that the law schools are “offering costly places to students in greater numbers than there are job opportunities”. The author has beautifully crafted the “Introduction” of the book into sub-themes like ‘Discontinuity in the Legal Profession’, ‘So Why Listen to Me?’, and ‘How the Book is Organized’.
It is very interesting to note that the Part One of the present book, in the words of the author, is ‘an updated, simplified restatement’ of author’s views on future of legal services, ‘as presented in four other works—The Future of Law (1996), Transforming the Law (2000), The End of Lawyers? (2008), and The Future of the Professions (2015, co-authored with Daniel Susskind and updated in 2022)’.
About the second part of the book, the author has discussed the future for the law firms and the challenges being faced by the in-house lawyers due to lawtech startup industry. This part has also focused on ‘access to justice’ problems and their tentative solutions through ‘a variety of online legal services’. The author has also highlighted something about working of ‘judges and the courts’ with reference to ‘video hearings, online courts, and online dispute resolution’. Here comes another reference to his masterpiece titled Online Courts and the Future of Justice (2019, updated in 2021).
With respect to Part Three of the book where the author has shown promising prospects for young lawyers, to ask ‘…what new jobs and new employers there will be, and for what and how the next generation of lawyers will be trained.’ He also dilated upon ‘innovation’ in the public profession of law with reference to artificial intelligence and a way forward. Finally, the author has used the words of Wayne Gretzky, the finest ice hockey player of all time: “skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been”.
If we look at chapter number one, the author described three drivers of change for a new lawyer to understand the reality of the profession: The ‘More for Less’ challenge, liberalization and technology. The first is to make us understand that in today’s world, as resources are scarce, therefore, the lawyers need to do more than they were supposed to do in their individual capacities. Its example is reduction in in-house lawyers for a business due to pressing financial constraints in the economy. The second driver of change is liberalization, which in the word of the author, is introduction of ‘alternative business structure’ wherein ‘non lawyers can own and run legal businesses. Here, the author has mentioned the impact of Clementi Report, when in the year 2004, it was published with the concept of liberalization of legal profession beyond the lawyers-only profession. The impact of technology on lawyers and the courts is discussed as another driver of change. Reference is given to artificial intelligence, technology oriented online courts and data science for decision-making processes
Continuing the debate of change in the source of legal services, the author has pinpointed a new trend in legal services which are provided by non-lawyers to create marginal deficiency of opportunity for hardcore lawyers having law degrees. These services are defined under the terms such as, in-sourcing, de-lawyering, relocating, off-shoring, outsourcing, sub-contracting, co-sourcing, near shoring, leasing, home sourcing, open sourcing, computerizing, solo sourcing, KM-sourcing and no sourcing. The discussion about these terminologies highlighted how the legal services are facing interdisciplinary challenges from other faculties and knowledge base professions. An example is the license to practice tax law by chartered accountants at one side while availability of ready-made open-source documentation.
To show the importance of legal technologies and their impact on the profession, the author has described fifteen such ‘disruptive’ technologies in law which have challenged and changed the way in which legal services were delivered. Indeed, in the words of the author, ‘they will transform the entire legal landscape’. The snapshots of these are as under:
- Document automation
- Relentless connectivity
- Electronic legal marketplace
- E-Learning
- Online legal guidance
- Legal open sourcing
- Closed legal communities
- Workflow and project management
- Embedded legal knowledge
- Blockchain
- Online dispute resolution
- Document analysis
- Machine prediction
- Natural language processing and
- Legal platforms
A very interesting grid system has been developed by the author to understand the linkage between information, knowledge, technology, the internal sources and the client. These are explained in chapter seven with sufficient detail for better understanding of working of a lawyer in changing world. These are not only guiding but informative as well.
The author has also dealt with in reasonable length the topic of lawtech startups. The discussion is subdivided into the startup landscape, its scope and its impact. The author has described the change that these startups are expected to bring in the profession of law in the words:
“Most mainstream lawyers and judges cannot imagine a revolution being initiated by any startup (or indeed upstart). At root, this is a failure of imagination.”
The game changing impact of lawtech startups is aptly described in the book with reference to access to justice problems (see Chapter 12). Chapter 13 is directly addressing the issue of judges, courts and technology. In this chapter, the author has focused on the discussion in subtitles like ‘Judges and Technology’, ‘Disappointing Progress’, ‘Technology Enabled Courts’, and ‘Remote Courts’, among others. He has also described the role of the reports on access to justice by Lord Wolf.
Further the role of lawtech in new modes of judicial dispensation through online court system and AI is described by the author in the following words as under:
“The challenge here is to ask how can we use the remarkable and steadily increasing reach of the internet, mobile technologies, and artificial intelligence to help many more people to understand their legal rights and enforce these with the backing of the law and the courts? We will need technologies that provide online legal guidance of various sorts as well as technologies that can enable the conduct of judicial work remotely on an online basis–by video hearing and by asynchronous processes (see Chapter 14)”.
Very interestingly, under a subheading titled ‘Computer Judge’ in chapter 14, the author has anticipated machine justice in the following words:
“However, unlike my younger self, I can now conceive of circumstances in which we might even welcome machines generating fully authoritative and binding court determinations”
In the final part of the book (Part Three: Prospects for Young Lawyers) the author has given idea of prospective new jobs for lawyers. These are beautifully named as under:
- The expert trusted advisor
- The enhanced practitioner
- Tomorrow’s lawyers
- Legal design thinker
- Legal knowledge engineer
- Legal no-coder
- Legal technologist
- Legal hybrid
- Legal process analyst
- Legal project manager
- Legal data scientist
- Legal data visualizer
- R&D worker
- Digital security guard
- ODR practitioner
- Moderator
- Legal management consultant
- Legal risk manager
The author has also described that the training of new lawyers ‘should be proactive, however, always on the lookout for experiences that prepare them for tomorrow’. By discussing the difficulties of new lawyers to be ready for these jobs, the author has also described as to who will employ them in future, for this Chapter 17 is dedicated. The author has given the following types of employers in this regard:
- Global accounting firms
- Major legal publishers
- Legal knowhow providers
- Legal process outsourcers
- Big brand businesses
- Legal leasing agencies
- Law companies
- Online legal service providers
- Legal management consultancies
- Lawtech companies
Equally important area under the above discussion was training for lawyers. In this regard, Chapter 18 and19 have been dedicated. He has emphasized change in the syllabus of legal education as also its mode and manner. E-Learning and Simulated Legal Practice are suggested as new modes where the law faculties must prepare themselves as the forums and platforms for aspiring new lawyers and adult learners already practicing the profession.
Chapter 21 deals with innovation, transformation and differentiation. Chapter 22 deals with artificial intelligence and future of the profession. The author has beautifully summarized the intersection between public profession of law and impact of technology in the following words:
“I implore you, tomorrow’s lawyers, to take up the mantle of the benevolent custodians; to be honest with yourselves and with society about those areas of legal endeavor that genuinely must be preserved for lawyers in the interests of clients. But you should work in the law in the interests of society and not of lawyers. Where, in all conscience, legal services can responsibly and reliably be offered as technology enabled self-service for non-lawyers, celebrate access to justice and draw upon your creative and entrepreneurial talents to find other ways that your legal knowledge and experience can bring unique value to your clients.”
The book finally concludes as under:
“In truth, you may feel you are on your own. But I urge you to come together, to join a growing movement of people who I say are ‘upgrading justice’ –exploiting technology in forging new paths for the law, our most important social institution”.
Under the chapter Further Reading, a number of authentic references have been given on the books that a promising new comer to the profession of law, or even a senior lawyer can consult to make oneself empowered to face the challenge of tomorrow and to remain relevant for the times to come.
Conclusion:
The purpose of reviewing the above book was to show the importance of changing technology, artificial intelligence, data driven decision making and new modes of doing same old things. Reading such types of books by the law students, lawyers, judges, law teachers and law faculty will make them more confident to take up the challenge with knowledge, skills and attitude. It will help them to become a source to protect the rights of the public in accordance with the Constitution and the law within new domain of technology enabled law practice and expected automated administration of justice.
The book is written in simple English and easily available in Pakistan through Amazon.com or Google Books. The author deserves applause for writing this book as also for his continuous updating the same for guidance, particularly for young lawyers and law students. Oxford University Press also deserves mention for its service to the profession of law around the globe.
[1] She is studying law at the Nadra Hassan Law Department, Kinnaird College for Women University, Lahore. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Her research is accessible at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=9736132.
[2] www.amazon.com, also available on Google Books. Retrieved on 29 December 2025
[3] Professor Richard Susskind CBE KC (Hon) is the world’s most cited author on the future of legal services and a leading expert on the impact of AI on society. He is President of the Society for Computers and Law and, from 1998 to 2023, he served as Technology Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. In 2024, Richard was appointed Special Envoy for Justice and AI to the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. Richard specialises in three fields – in the future of professional services, in the future of courts and dispute resolution, and in the impact of AI on society, business, and humanity. He advises leading professional firms, in-house legal departments, and governments and judiciaries around the world. In the 1980s, he wrote his doctorate on AI and the law at Balliol College, Oxford.
https://www.susskind.com/ Retrieved on 29 December 2025
