Vol. 11 No. 3 (April 2001) pp. 155-157.

TRANSFORMING THE LAW: ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY, JUSTICE AND THE LEGAL MARKET PLACE by Richard Susskind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 301 pp. Cloth $29.95. ISBN: 0-19-829922-2.

Reviewed by Herbert M. Kritzer, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.

TRANSFORMING THE LAW is a follow up to Richard Susskind's important book on the impact of information technology on legal practice, THE FUTURE OF LAW (1996). In the earlier book, Susskind described his vision of the coming impact of information technology on the delivery of legal services and the practice of law. TRANSFORMING THE LAW is a combination of an updating and extension of the earlier argument, a response to some of the critics of that earlier work, a collection of Susskind's previously published essays on artificial intelligence and the law, and some commentary on recent developments in England (i.e., civil justice reforms developed under the leadership of Lord Woolf). The essays vary in their degree of likely interest to scholars of law and courts, but there is enough here that I would recommend this book to anyone interested in thinking about the changes that are being wrought by information technology in the law and courts arena.

The central theme of Susskind's earlier work on the information revolution in law is two-fold. First, information tools empower consumers of legal services, both to make stronger demands of their legal advisors and representatives and to take on tasks themselves that they could not heretofore handle. Second, legal practitioners who do not adapt to this new reality will see their practices whither and die. Susskind sees these changes as happening over the relatively long-term (15 years or so). One way that Susskind summarizes his view of coming developments is as describing a role in the future of what he labels the "legal information engineer," who will design and implement the tools whereby nonlawyers will access legal expertise. One result of the view he has been propounding is that he has been in demand as a consultant and advisor, "an independent advisor to global professional firms and to national governments" to quote the first sentence of the book jacket biography.

The new material in TRANSFORMING THE LAW, which largely comes in Part I, can best be understand as an effort by Susskind to systematize his message in a way that can be grasped by organizational managers. His device for this is what he calls "The Grid" [capitals in the original]. He presents The Grid as a pair of cross-cutting axes with the horizontal labeled "Technology" on the left and "Knowledge" on the right, and the vertical labeled "External" on top and "Internal" on bottom; at the origin is "Information." He labels the four areas created by the crosscutting axes the "quadrants." The Grid is really a two by two table:

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TECHNOLOGY KNOWLEDGE

external provision of

EXTERNAL technology access to

links knowledge

internal internal

INTERNAL use of management of

technology knowledge

Susskind proceeds to apply this framework to the changes that are occurring in the practice of law, arguing that it can be used to assess where we have come from, where we are now, and where we want to go. Essentially, he argues that circa 1995, most major law firms use of technology fell in the lower left-hand box or quadrant; that is, information technology was used for internal purposes (word processing, accounting, document management, etc.). By 1997, most major law firms had also crept up into part of the top left- hand box and crept over to part of the lower right-hand box, by establishing simple websites, providing for email communication with clients and internal email. By 1999, there was further spread into the upper left and lower right boxes, with the growth of intranets for sharing information internally, and the development of more sophisticated web sites; these new web sites began a move into the upper right hand box, by offering "useful practical updates and substantive legal information" (p. 17) and for a few forward looking firms rudimentary efforts to provide online legal advice systems.

As one might expect, Susskind's vision is that the successful law firm of the future (2005 or so) will need to occupy fully all four boxes, finding ways of linking clients to firm intranets, setting up expert systems for use both internally and by clients, and offering online legal guidance systems. Susskind sees a need for all four boxes/quadrants to function as a "seemless web." In this brave new information world, three of the four boxes will consist of (going counter-clockwise from the upper left) client relationship systems, online legal services, and internal knowledge systems; all of these will need to be integrated both with one another and with the lower left-hand box which will continue to be the basic use of technology for internal management and productivity. Susskind goes on to layout eight "strategies," seven of which are partial commitments focusing on some subset of the boxes; as one would expect, it is the eighth, "full commitment" that Susskind supports.

Although the development and presentation of The Grid focuses on what lawyers should be doing, in Chapter 2 Susskind looks at developments from more of a demand side: what is that clients want, how clients and consumers are using the technology to undercut the traditional role of lawyers, and how competitors to the legal profession are using technology to cut into the market for legal services. A key element of what is going on as a result of the internet, according to Susskind, is "disintermediation" and "re- intermediation." That is, where historically consumers had relatively little choice in where to obtain legal services (actually, in England, there was and is, considerable choice in comparison to the U. S.), today the World Wide Web has opened the eyes of consumers and made available sources of information that were unimaginable by most people 10 or 20 years ago. Susskind goes on to advise law firms that they need to be proactive; they need to find ways of not waiting for clients to come to them with problems but to anticipate the clients' needs and go to the client before they come to the law firm. He advises firms to "work under the same virtual roof" as clients, and to "identify clients' main business episodes."

Part II of the book is essentially a

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brief summary of the argument of the earlier book, followed by several essays that have appeared elsewhere or were given as speeches. These essays explicate some of the themes in the earlier book or respond to criticisms. For those who have read the earlier book, there is little new here.

Part III is a collection of essays published by Susskind between 1985 and 1990, all dealing with expert systems and artificial intelligence in the legal context. Notes suggest that some of the essays have been updated to some degree. To me, the most interesting of these essays was Chapter 8, "A Jurisprudential Approach to Expert Systems in the Law." In this essay, Susskind argues that to implement an expert system successfully in the legal arena, one needs to have a theory of jurisprudence, and this theory must bear a strong resemblance to reality. Given that expert systems rely upon artificial intelligence (AI), that intelligence must have something underlying it. For legal decision-making, that intelligence must be based in some idea of jurisprudence. Only with a valid theory of what is driving a system is it possible to "restructur[e] the body of knowledge ... so it can be represented as data structures within the computer system" (p. 183). This is necessary because an expert system must do more than retrieve information. It must engage in a form of reasoning, and in the case of AI applied to law, this must be a form of legal reasoning. Thus, "all expert systems [in law] must embody a theory of structure and individuation of laws, a theory of legal norms, a theory of descriptive legal science, a theory of legal reasoning, a theory of logic and the law, and a theory of legal systems, as well as elements of a semantic theory, a sociology and psychology of law (theories that must all themselves rest on more basic philosophical foundations" (p. 184). Susskind reviews some of the early efforts to harness expert systems to the legal setting, noting that there was little or no attention to issues of jurisprudence.

Part IV is entitled "IT in the Justice System." More accurately, it focuses on IT in the English justice system. One chapter is a status report on how IT is currently used both by the courts and by practitioners; another chapter is prescriptive, describing Susskind's vision of what the government should be doing to use IT to modernize and make more efficient the court system. The closing chapter, "The Computer Judge: Some Early Thoughts," really belongs more with Part III. It has more of a jurisprudential flavor than the other two chapters in the section, and is a reprint of an essay originally published in 1986.

Overall, the book is somewhat of a mixed bag. Given the mix of old and new, and the mix of topics, this is not surprising. Part of the mixed bag nature also comes from the mixed nature of Susskind's audience. The first part of the book is clearly aimed at those who want to apply his ideas in practical ways (i.e., his consulting clients); other parts are more intellectual and academic in tone. I would nonetheless recommend this book to someone interested in the impact of information technology developments in the legal arena, but I would advise first reading Susskind's earlier book, and then reading selectively in this new book.

REFERENCE:

Susskind, Richard. 1996. THE FUTURE OF LAW: FACING THE CHALLENGES OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (New York: Oxford University Press)