For Immediate Release
February 6, 2009
TORONTO – The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) and author and legal futurist Richard Susskind are pleased to announce the Canadian launch of The End of Lawyers? – the much anticipated sequel to Susskind’s number one best-seller, The Future of Law.
The Canadian book launch takes place at the National Club in Toronto on Wednesday February 11 at 5 p.m. – an event co-sponsored by the CBA and Oxford University Press.
At the same time, Richard Susskind has entered into an agreement with the Association to provide services as a special adviser. In this role, he will introduce, through the CBA, a wealth of new and challenging ideas about the future of the legal profession in Canada.
“We welcome Richard Susskind as special adviser and look forward to his unique contribution to the CBA. His insight is particularly useful as law firms face the challenge of delivering the best possible services to clients in a changing world,” says CBA President Guy Joubert of Winnipeg, in announcing the agreement.
Richard Susskind is also enthusiastic about his new relationship with the CBA. “I have always found Canadian lawyers to be receptive to my ideas about the future of legal practice and I believe they have the insight and the drive to bring about major change to the profession.”
The End of Lawyers? predicts significant new pressures on the legal marketplace and great change in the world of legal services. The author suggests that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditization of legal services, and by the pervasive development and uptake of new and disruptive legal technologies. He foresees different law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today. And, he notes, this will ensure greater access to justice and legal insight for a greater number of people, independence of the legal profession, and protection of the rule of law.
This book is the sequel to his legal bestseller of 1996, The Future of Law. In that work, Richard Susskind foresaw that the law would be transformed by IT. The book generated enormous interest and influenced public policy-makers and law firm leaders around the globe. Many of its predictions have already come to pass.
Richard Susskind advises law firms and governments around the world. He has written numerous books and columns on legal technology and has been invited to speak in more than 40 countries. He has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England since 1998.
The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to improvement in the law and the administration of justice. Some 38,000 lawyers, law teachers, and law students from across Canada are members.
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CONTACT: Hannah Bernstein, Canadian Bar Association, Tel: (613) 237-2925, ext. 146; E-mail: hannahb@cba.org.
