Book review: the future of the professions: how technology will transform the work of human experts by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind

In The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts, Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind give a descriptive, predictive and normative argument for the impending dissolution of our professional institutions in their current state. Although she questions the decision to leave issues of privacy, confidentiality and online security unexamined, Jennifer Miller positions this book as an accessible and theoretically grounded account of why professional work can, will and must change

The Knowledge Guild: The Legal Profession in an Age of Technical Change

In The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, Richard Susskind predicts that lawyers will suffer the fate of other guild-members—the artisans and craftsman of an earlier age—who saw their livelihoods wiped out by the potent mix of technological advancement and market forces that is modernity. He argues that the commoditization of legal services will make much traditional legal work unnecessary, dramatically reducing the demand for the one-on-one client service that has sustained the growth of the legal profession. This review challenges Susskind’s assumption that the work of lawyers is analogous to the work of the mechanical craftsmen of previous eras and questions his failure to consider the political and legal factors that support the traditional legal profession. Susskind offers no evidence to support his claim that greater automation of legal work will result in less demand for human legal services. In fact, the evidence suggests that productivity increases in knowledge industries increase demand for those knowledge goods. And Susskind never discusses professional considerations such as malpractice, conflicts of interest and confidentiality that serve to reify the traditional order and limit the transformative power of technological change

Book review: tomorrow's lawyers: an introduction to your future (2nd ed.) by Richard Susskind

In the second edition of Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future, Richard Susskind provides a concise and up-to-date account of the mid- and long-term future of the legal profession. This is a finely crafted work that not only reflects on the potential new horizons of legal practice, but also asks us to consider how such transformations can make our society a more just and fair one, writes Anton Moiseienko

Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and Law

Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and La

Defining International Law Librarianship in an Age of Multiplicity, Knowledge, and Open Access to Law

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship’, however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practise their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing twenty-first century legal researchers; the development and nurturing of a shared base of professional knowledge; and a common commitment to work toward ensuring free and open access to legal information globally