About 15 years ago, an Oxford-educated British lawyer named Richard Susskind published the book "The Future of Law: Facing the Challenges of Information Technology."

In the book, Susskind predicted that the Internet and electronic forms of information would come to play a central role in the legal profession. It received little attention at the time, especially in the United States.

Just more than a decade later, with technology all the rage, Susskind - affirmed that his first book was not just a schoolboy vision of a brave new world - keeps a packed schedule traveling around the world to speak at legal conferences, consult with top law firms and talk about his new book, "The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services."

In it, he argues that over a period of incremental change, the legal profession as we know it will completely change due to technology. Lawyers will not so much "practice" the law as serve as consultants about legal risk; researching the law and writing briefs will be largely outsourced.

It is likely that Susskind's book sits on the nightstands of some of the thousands of laid-off lawyers across the country - and across the pond. It has become painfully evident that there are chinks in the armor of the current law-firm business model and that changes are in order, most of them related to technology. Last month, an article entitled "With the Downturn It's Time to Rethink the Legal Profession" remained the most e-mailed article at The New York Times Web site for several days, most likely because associates short of work were e-mailing it to each other.


Additionally, the overwhelming message at the annual meeting of the National Association for Law Placement in Washington, D.C., last month was that more change is coming, with speakers emphasizing that law business models are evolving and that technology will play a major role in creating the new paradigm. Because technology allows attorneys to access more information at any location, law-firm partners and associates may decrease in favor of attorneys who act "of counsel," or on a contract basis.

Consistent with Susskind's thinking, many at the conference suggested that firms will move toward a consulting model, employing not just attorneys but, in an effort to meet a more diverse set of client needs, workers with different kinds of expertise who can apply that knowledge to legal situations.

The "unbundling" of legal services is also likely part of the wave of the future, in which firms no longer rely on partnership-track associates to act as generalists focusing on each step of a case from client development to research, writing, and presentation in court or at arbitration, but instead put their money into cheaper staff attorneys who may focus on a single portion of practice, such as e-discovery issues, online legal research or seeking out new clients.

Such changes, and the general consensus that the practice of law will be able to happen anytime, anywhere, will not only change the lives of attorneys practicing at mega, large and smaller firms, but offer new opportunities for solo practitioners and contract attorneys. Additionally, it will change the face of staff - traditional secretaries and generalist paralegals are likely to disappear in favor of highly specialized and niched support. Furthermore, if the practice of law is going to change, acknowledging those changes to students currently in law school and helping them develop needed skills must become a part of the equation.

One aspect of the law that is often left out of the discussion of technology is that of government and public-interest work. While scientific advances have changed aspects of criminal law with respect to advances in DNA evidence, etc., information technology has not always been quick to come to public-interest work, where funds may be limited. Moreover, for attorneys who are in the courtroom all day, as public defenders often are, books may still take precedence over computers if courtrooms have not been updated as technology changes - and many have not.


In putting this column together, I posed a two-part question to people in a variety of roles within the law: "Over the past five years, how has technology changed the role of someone in your current position, and how will it change even more over the next five to 10 years?" Those surveyed included associates at global firms, Buffalo-based firms, solo practitioners, public-interest attorneys, current law students and legal support staff. A sample of responses is below.

• "I can easily dig through the SEC's records on any company subject to public-filing requirements. I can do it from my desk without needing to explain my request and wait for a paralegal or a legal secretary to accomplish it. I can get state records of incorporation in a matter of hours and can receive confirmation of filing with a secretary of state in one hour, if I'm willing to pay for the extra expense."

• "The biggest impact of technology in the last five years is the ability to do my job anywhere, anytime. I can access the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office files, tools such as Google Patents, and many client files from work or home. In fact, using a laptop and an AirCard, I have been able to work out of our car and access files while my wife drove to Washington.... The ‘paperless office' has been a Holy Grail of sorts, but without much motivation, most firms have not invested the time or money to actually go paperless."

• "An efficient and profitable practice cannot be without technology. It is that simple. Even if the learning curve is steep and takes costly time, the time you lose as a practitioner on inefficiency is greatly multiplied over the time you have lost learning the new technology.... As for in the future, I am currently trying to go as paperless as possible, with the exception of original documents requiring signatures."

• "As a public defender, most of my time is spent in court, and my main research tool is my Gilbert's Criminal Practice Annual 2009. Technology has had some effect in the sense that the rap sheet is now more detailed than it used to be, providing more detail about how previous cases were charged and how they were disposed of.... In the next five years, I see videoconferencing as a tool that can make the practice of high-volume criminal defense more efficient. It allows attorneys to interview prisoners at the correctional facility via the Internet without having to leave the building. Also, tools like Google Street View can give an attorney a chance to get a look at the scene without having to leave the office."

• "Keeping abreast of developments in your field and honing your workplace skills are no longer optional.... While I'm comparing software applications, supervising scanning projects, working with load files and readying trial exhibits for electronic presentation, I wistfully remember the days when experience and collective wisdom equaled job security."

• "I am almost ashamed to say that I rarely use actual books or even go to the library when researching anymore. I do all of my legal research almost exclusively online, accessing sites like Lexis, Westlaw and my school's online e-journals. It was actually challenging doing source coordination for my journal, because we were required to photocopy the ‘original' source for a citation, as opposed to merely printing the relevant portions from a Web site."

Caroline Bala Brancatella is a law clerk for a federal judge in Philadelphia, Pa. A member of the New York state bar, she can be reached at cbrancatella@gmail.com.