New book by Richard Susskind: Tomorrow’s Lawyers

Professor Dr. Richard Susskind has published a new book entitled Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The book is available now in the UK, and will be available next month in the U.S.

Here is the publisher’s description:

In his newest provocative and forward-looking volume on the legal profession, Richard Susskind — the best-selling author of The End of Lawyers? and The Future of Law –predicts fundamental and irreversible changes in the world of law. What Susskind sees is eye-opening-a legal world of virtual courts, Internet-based global legal businesses, online document production, commoditized service, legal process outsourcing, and web-based simulated practice. Legal markets will be liberalized, with new jobs for lawyers and new employers too.

Tomorrow’s Lawyers is a definitive guide to this future–for young and aspiring lawyers, and for all who want to modernize our legal and justice systems. It introduces the new legal landscape and offers practical guidance for those who intend to build careers and businesses in law. Susskind identifies the key drivers of change, such as the economic downturn, and considers how these will shape the legal marketplace. He then sketches out the new legal landscape as he envisions it, highlighting the changing role of law firms-and in-house lawyers-and the coming of virtual hearings and online dispute resolution. He also suggests solutions to major concerns within the legal profession, such as diminishing public funding, and explores alternative roles for future lawyers in a world increasingly dominated by IT. And what are the prospects for aspiring lawyers? Susskind predicts what new jobs and new employers there will be, equipping prospective lawyers with penetrating questions to put to their current and future bosses.

Tomorrow’s Lawyers is an essential roadmap to the future of law for those who want to survive the rapidly changing legal landscape.

Features

• The first introduction for young and aspiring lawyers to the new legal landscape and how to succeed in it
• A revised and updated vision of the future, by one of the world’s leading experts whose past predictions for the law have generally come to pass
• Provides solutions to major concerns within the legal profession, such as diminishing public funding, and explores alternative roles for future lawyers in a world increasingly dominated by IT
• Identifies new employers for lawyers of the future and equips young lawyers with questions to ask prospective employers

Neil Rose has a new summary of the book at Legal Futures: Susskind: no future for high street firms, but window of opportunity for mid-sized practices.

HT @charonqc

Glassmeyer: CALI partners with law schools to build online tools for low-income litigants

Sarah Glassmeyer, JD, MLS, of CALI has posted Law Schools Team Up with CALI to Harness Skills of Law Students, Develop Online Tools for Low-Income Litigants, at the CALI Blog.

The post contains a press release, which begins:

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI®) will announce at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools in New Orleans on January 6, 2013 that they have reached agreements with faculty members from six law schools to develop course kits as part of the Access to Justice Clinical Course Project (A2J Clinic Project). Participating law schools include Columbia Law School, Concordia University School of Law, CUNY School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, UNC School of Law, and University of Miami School of Law.

Each participating faculty member will develop and document a course model that uses A2J Author® to teach law students how technology tools can be used to lower barriers to justice for low-income, self-represented litigants. CALI will use those course models to assist other law schools in establishing A2J Clinical Courses as a permanent part of their law school curriculum.

A2J Author is a software tool developed by CALI and the Center for Access to Justice & Technology at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law to deliver greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling lawyers and law students to rapidly build user-friendly web-based document assembly tools called A2J Guided Interviews®. These A2J Guided Interviews allow users to complete court documents by presenting a series of easy-to-understand questions while graphics virtually lead users along the path to the courthouse, where these documents can be filed. [...]

HT @caliorg

Technology Improving Access to Legal Information in Developing Countries

The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law has posted Smart ways to deliver the legal information people really need, at the HiiL Insights blog:

This post describes a number of recent technological and process innovations that are increasing access to justice in developing nations.

Among the innovations and resources covered are:

• Joyce Hakmeh‘s work on Legal information building and sharing in the Arab world
• Online legal document assembly services, like LegalZoom
• SMS-based legal information services such as Frontline SMS Legal
• “Microjustice” projects such as Microjustice Kenya

Wilson on Technology-Driven Transformation in Legal Services

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has published two widely discussed new posts on technology-driven change in legal services: The Rise of the Programmers and I Am Now an App. The posts appear on Slaw.ca, the Canadian legal blog.

In these posts, Jason presents a distinctive vision of how technology is transforming the provision of legal services. He describes the rate and salience of change, furnishes examples of technology-driven development in the legal sector, and identifies practice areas that seem particularly susceptible to substantial change under the influence of technology.

More of Jason’s writings on legal technology and legal publishing are available at his blog, rethinc.k.

Goyal on Technology, Access to Justice, and MyLegalBriefcase

Monica Goyal, J.D., M.Sc., of MyLegalBriefcase gave a presentation on technology, access to justice, and MyLegalBriefcase at the “Startups in the Law” panel at NELIC 2011: The New and Emerging Legal Infrastructures Conference, held 15 April 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, in Berkeley, California, USA.

In her presentation, Ms. Goyal discusses MyLegalBriefcase, an innovative interactive online service that provides customized forms and procedural instructions for self-represented litigants in Small Claims Court Ontario.

In the discussion following the presentation, Ms. Goyal discusses several topics, including legal education reform, ways to improve access to justice, and issues facing legal technology entrepreneurs.

Lauritsen, The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools

Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems, has published The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools (2010). Here is the abstract:

This ground-breaking guide introduces lawyers and other professionals to a powerful class of software that supports core aspects of legal work. The author discusses how technologies like practice systems, work product retrieval, document assembly, and interactive checklists help people work smarter. If you are looking to work more effectively, this book provides a clear roadmap, with many concrete examples and thought-provoking ideas. Topics include:

• What does it mean to “work smart”?
• How can we enlist software in the substance of legal work?
• How can intelligent systems make us happier and more effective?
• Why don’t we make more use of them?
• Who are the players in the world of legal knowledge tools?
• Where is this all going?

Demo Available of Digital LLC Project, from Law Lab at Berkman Center

A demo is available of Digital LLC, “open-source software that provides entrepreneurs with the tools to take advantage of Vermont’s recent [...] legislation allowing ‘virtual LLCs’ and ‘virtual corporations’ to achieve full legal status and to exist entirely in digital form.”

Digital LLC is a project of the Law Lab at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

According to the announcement, “Digital LLC guides entrepreneurs in building the two main components that govern the management of an LLC: the Operating Agreement and the Articles of Organization. Once these key documents are agreed upon by the designated LLC members, the software allows users to make all management decisions digitally for the entire existence of the LLC.”

Bladow on Opening the Courts: Using Technology to Empower the Unrepresented

A video is available of a presentation by Kate Bladow of Pro Bono Net, entitled Opening the Courts: Using Technology to Empower the Unrepresented, given 25 May 2010 at Gov 2.0 Expo 2010 in Washington, DC, USA.

The presentation concerns “courts’ use of technology to help those without lawyers, including Pro Bono Net‘s LawHelp Interactive service.” LawHelp Interactive incorporates HotDocs and A2J Author.

A2J Author is an innovative, Drupal-based online interviewing and document assembly system co-developed by The Center for Access to Justice & Technology (CAJT) at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI).

Click here for more information on A2J Author.

Pro Se Assistance Tool Being Developed at Universiteit Twente & Universiteit van Tilburg

A new online service designed to help self-represented individuals decide whether to pursue litigation, is being developed by Dr. Ellen Giebels and colleagues at the Universiteit Twente Research Centre for Conflict, Risk and Safety Perception (iCRiSP), and researchers at the Universiteit van Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems (TISCO), according to an announcement on the blog of Jurix, The Foundation for Legal Knowledge Based Systems, and a press release from Universiteit Twente.

According to the press release, the new application will address consumer law and divorce, and may later also address employment law. The system is intended to help pro ses assess their likelihood of success should they pursue legal remedies.

A noteworthy aspect of the project is the cooperation of psychology researchers, lawyers, alternative dispute resolution experts, and computer scientists from the very beginning of the project, to ensure that issues respecting users’ attributes as well as legal and ADR substantive and procedural issues, are addressed in the system from the start.

This project accords with a number of other recent efforts to develop online tools to assist self-represented individuals, including A2J Author — developed by CALI, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, and the Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Center for Access to Justice and Technology — and its implementation in the U.S. federal courts, E Pro Se.

For more information please see the Jurix post and the press release.

Staudt on A2J Author: Technology that Attacks Barriers to Access to Justice

Professor Ronald W. Staudt of the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, has published All the Wild Possibilities: Technology that Attacks Barriers to Access to Justice, forthcoming in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Here is the abstract:

Predicting how technology will affect the future of the legal profession is difficult and unreliable work. I have made my share of such predictions in the past thirty years, including foretelling the death of the paper casebook in law schools and vast improvements in law practice that would be triggered by computers and document assembly software. Neither of these two prophesies has yet been fulfilled. Yet a real success story has emerged based in part on my persistent optimism that technology can improve the delivery of legal services. A2J Author, a modest software tool that allows lawyers to build guided Internet interviews for prospective clients, has been adopted across the United States and in several foreign countries as an interface for public access to legal processes. This Article describes the origin of A2J Author as a collaboration by courts, legal aid agencies, and funding sources. The Article explores the combination of factors that produced this technology, which successfully attacks barriers to access to justice. Finally, the Article speculates on whether A2J Author can begin to transform the delivery of legal aid and government services to low income people.

[Update 11 February 2010: A2J Author was co-developed by "The Center for Access to Justice & Technology (CAJT), [and] the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI).” HT @johnpmayer.]