Day one of the conference and Keynote Speaker Richard Susskind stepped up to the podium to address his theme - Tomorrow's Legal Marketplace. Susskind is one of the most influential and thought provoking writers on the legal profession and it's response to new developments, particularly in the IT arena. He mentioned that his book, The End of Lawyers?, published in 2008 could also have marked the end of his own career, and that makes a nice segue into a proposition for all of us, with law and legal services changing at a rate of knots, what about our own careers? How do we stay relevant, or better still indispensable?
Susskind identified three drivers of change in the current legal marketplace, the first being the drive of 'more for less'. As budgets are cut and more quality output is expected from fewer heads, legal process outsourcing making inroads, this issue touches us all. The second driver was 'decomposing' which relates to the way that any piece of work can be decomposed or broken down into its component parts in order to find the most efficient way of sourcing those elements. Finally the last driver, technology. Susskind relayed that in 1995 when he predicted the use of email by lawyers would overtake other forms of delivering legal advice he was accused of bringing the profession into disrepute. Times have changed!
A couple of remarks really caught my imagination. The first was in relation to outsourcing and off shoring and the cry that this development is cannibalising the law. Richard quipped that if there's going to be cannibalisation you want to be the first at feast. I'd add that you want to know as much as possible about these issues in advance, so when the topics are raised at work, you already have an informed response and not just a gut clenching fear of being eaten alive!
Relaying the story of famous Ice Hokey player Wayne Gretzky in an interview, when asked why he was such a genius of the game, he replied he always skated to where the puck was going to be, not to where it was. Susskind has an uncanny ability to do just that with the legal profession and future technologies, his full presentation is not available on the site yet (approximately two weeks I'm told) but it's well worth listening to in full if you get the chance. He asked us to look ahead five years, and have a persuasive concept of what the future will look like. He mentioned that our profession would have four key job groups in tomorrows market - Project Management, Knowledge Engineer, Legal Technologist and Process Analyst. His parting comment was positive - 'The legal sector is moving towards your skills and experience.'
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