Futurist Says Lawyers Will Become Legal Risk Consultants
A legal futurist predicts that lawyers advising corporations will change their practice models to offer a wide range of advice on how to avoid legal problems.
In the second installment of a two-part interview with the Am Law Daily, futurist Richard Susskind said in-house lawyers who talk to him emphasize the need to avoid future legal problems. “And yet, hardly a lawyer or law firm on the planet has chosen to develop methods, tools, techniques or systems to help their clients review, identify, quantify and control the legal risks that they face,” he said. “I expect this to change.”
He believes lawyers will begin offering “a wide range of proactive legal services whose focus will be on anticipating and pre-empting legal problems. In some ways more like a form of strategy consulting, this legal work will be wider ranging and more generic, helping clients prepare more responsibly for the future.”
“This could fundamentally change the way in which the law is practiced,” he told the Am Law Daily.
In the first installment of the Am Law Daily interview, Susskind predicted that legal services will be “commoditized” and delivered more cheaply. He said more legal work will be outsourced, and more clients will collaborate to share the costs of some legal services, such as regulatory compliance.
“The party is now over,” said Susskind, the author of The End of Lawyers? “The credit crunch is going to accelerate change in the legal profession.”
