Richard Susskind

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The summer of our discontents

Two months ago, if you prompted Version 3 of the AI-art generator MidJourney to generate depictions of an “otter on a plane using wifi,” you were rewarded with the nonsense in the left panel of our lead graphic. A month later, Version 4 could take the same prompt and render, in seconds, multiple detailed drawings that are likely beyond 80% of the population’s imagination and certainly beyond 99.9% of the population’s acumen at illustration (above right panel).

Imagine what our new year will bring.

This matters. And we shall return to our wifi-enabled Mustelidae further down.

This lengthy essay has a lengthy preview essay authored by CSO Casey Flaherty. See Post 347. These two essays reflect nearly everything we are learning through our industry meetings. Although the act of writing is a crucial step in crystalizing our thinking for ourselves and our clients, we’ve done our best to make these essays enjoyable for readers.Continue Reading LexFusion’s Second Annual Legal Market Year in Review (348)

Good question.  I have a few thoughts.

In recent travels, I came across a group of women who appeared Amish in dress, talking and laughing with one another, and I experienced a surprising emotion—I was jealous.

For someone who runs towards the new, always testing the capability, seeing if it improves life for myself and others, and sharing it broadly if the answer is yes, the experience of jealousy when met with a conservative crew steeped in tradition (whether fair or not, some would say “frozen in time”) was puzzling.

After some self-investigation and reflection, I realized that I was envious of their sense of community. There is safety in numbers, there is also comfort in numbers. Comfort in community.
Continue Reading Q: NewLaw is hard. Why should I stay? (344)

A. Because it requires us to evolve our culture.

The building blocks to create the next level of Legal are now available, so why aren’t we “there” yet?

In this month’s NewLaw column, I suggest that Legal’s modernization journey is cultural as well as technological.  Indeed, without the evolution of our culture, our innovation efforts are destined to frustrate and underwhelm our key stakeholders.
Continue Reading Q. Why aren’t we “there” yet in modernizing Legal? (286)

To date, this highly influential stakeholder has had very little to say.

The fierce and fascinating struggle underway in the American states over legal services reform brings to the table a large collection of interest groups.  These groups include law firms, legal aid organizations, entrepreneurs who might benefit financially from the liberalization of entry rules, and of course the gatekeeper entities, including state bar authorities and the state supreme courts, whose decisions are crucial to the evolution and shape of reform.  See Posts 239 (beginning of a four-part series on serious challenges of bar federalism).

The identity of these specific groups may differ from state to state, as the legal ecosystem has contours often tailored to a particular state’s history and objectives, but the configuration of stakeholders has some rather common elements.

What remains somewhat opaque in this robust and interconnected battle over the reform of legal services is the voice of legal educators and the law schools.  These are, after all, the places in which future lawyers are educated and professional values are instilled.  It is had to imagine a more fertile and opportune time to discuss the ambitions and philosophies of this next generation of legal professionals.
Continue Reading Legal education as a key stakeholder in legal services reform (276)

A law firm with best-in-class ALSP features

I have written before about how the lines between legal service providers are blurring, see, e.g., Lucien Pera & Yvonne Nath, “What If… Chambers Ranks Law Firms Alongside ALSPs?,” Law.com, Aug 20, 2020 (discussing implications of Chambers issuing its first ranking of ALSPs), and I especially enjoy singling out particular NewLaw business models for a closer inspection to show you exactly what I mean, see, e.g., The Post-Pandemic Law Firm (forthcoming Nov 2021).

Today, I feature Radiant Law (with which I have no affiliation).
Continue Reading Radiant Law: a closer look (265)

A slice is reserved for everyone who predicts the future of law.

Today is the debut of Anusia Gillespie’s monthly Q&A column on NewLaw Fundamentals.  See Post 243.  This post (241) is an explainer on why we are running Anusia’s series. One part of the explanation is practical.  A second part is deeply analytical and likely of more interest to regular Legal Evolution readers.  Both parts, however, are rooted in the value of humility.
Continue Reading Humble pie diet (241)

A crowded, chaotic landscape in love with the future.

The opening graphs of Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers (2nd ed. 2016) predict the revolution that is now underway:

This book is a short introduction to the future for young and aspiring lawyers.

Tomorrow’s legal world, as predicted and described here, bears little resemblance to that of the past. Legal institutions and lawyers are at a crossroads, I claim, and will change more radically in less than two decades than they have over the past two centuries. If you’re a young lawyer, this revolution will happen on your watch. (p. xvii)

Indeed, only a revolution could explain the above “market map,” which reflects literally hundreds of point solutions for a rapidly expanding one-to-many legal marketplace.
Continue Reading The best metaphor for today’s legal market is the auto industry circa 1905 (231)

A long-game model based on expertise, access, and trust.

This post is a deep dive into LexFusion, a new go-to-market organization founded by Joe Borstein and Paul Stroka.

Longtime readers of Legal Evolution may recall Post 034, which was a profile of the legal industry’s most skillful and accomplished team of consultative…

Photo by Jeremy AAsum on Unsplash

If blazing a new path is your only option, it’s also your best option. Make the most of it.

[Editor’s note:  If readers pick up a copy of Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers (2nd ed. 2017) and flip to page 135, they’ll see a table captioned “New jobs for lawyers.” This table is reproduced below.  Richard writes, “these are the jobs that flow quite clearly from the arguments and claims of this book.” 
Continue Reading One student’s career journey into legal tech (196)