Will the Rise of the Machine Bring Lawyers New Clients?
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Online kits to do you taxes or make a will are one thing, but robotic doctors and automated architects are another entirely. Tom Meltzer in a story in The Guardian explores how the professions could be at risk in the digital age and what, exactly, that means for lawyers.
“Economists and futurists know it’s not all doom and gloom, but it is all change,” said Meltzer. He cites research by Associated Press reporters who analyzed employment data and found that contrary to popular belief, it’s not the low-skilled, manual labor jobs that are most in peril of being replaced by technology, but instead it was the “traditionally middle-class careers,” like bookkeepers and secretaries. Indeed, we reported earlier this month that when McDermott Will & Emery laid off 25 secretaries, they blamed technology.
Futurist Richard Susskind told Meltzer he predicts not the demise of the legal profession itself, but a vast change in it, whereby the work is broken down into individual components, many of which can be automated. Meltzer points to entrepreneur Charley Moore as an example of this “new law.” Moore founded an online legal services company called Rocket Lawyer five years ago, and it now has 30 million users. “The work lawyers on the network do has already begun to resemble the streamlined, one-to-many roles Susskind predicted,” said Meltzer.
Read original articleTags: Charley Moore, Richard Susskind, Tom Meltzer
