If right now you type the name “Susskind” and the book title “The End of Lawyers?” into Google’s blog search page, your screen will fill with more than 3,919 entries (We’re hoping to lock down position 3,920 as soon as we locate and hit the [update post] button on the old Wordpress here).

Sort these entries by date and you will note that, even now, seven months after his book’s publication date and four-plus months after his keynote speech at ABA Techshow, people are still writing — frequently — about Richard Susskind’s writing. Clearly, a nerve has been touched.

So, what’s in this haystack of opinion?  It’s a mix, really.  We’ve read more of them than we care to admit, and we’d sort the pile thusly: 

1. Mostly pro-Susskind, arguing, basically, that the legal profession fits the classic profiles for business model disruption and tipping-point accelerating change. Increasingly this is the dominant voice in the chorus.
2. Some anti-Susskind, which mostly goes like this: “Everything’s fine. Keep moving. Pay no attention to the Scotsman on the podium. There’s nothing to see here. Any downturn in the profession is proportionally and causally related to the downturn in the economy and no further structural issues need be considered. All is well. Remain calm.”
3. A few skirmishes between Group #1 and Group #2.
4. Assorted Anekāntavādan elephant-touching from the narrowly self-focused.

So, let us save you a little time and a lot of eye-strain.  Skip the other 3,918 entries and proceed directly to the needle in this particular haystack.  Michael Stern, from Cooley Godward’s Palo Alto office, writes as lucidly and crisply and cogently as you might expect from someone with a BA in English from Columbia, an MA in English from Cambridge, and a PhD in English from Yale. (Also, a JD from Berkeley).

Stern’s clearly a fan of Susskind’s thesis, if not his writing style.  Stern thoroughly analyzes and fully encapsulates “The End of Lawyers?” before pronouncing that the book’s predictions are “already emerging around us” and that we ignore them at our own peril.  Change is already here.  Lawyers can manage it or it will manage them.  But it’s not going away.

Okay.  Blog #3,921…you’re up.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under In the news, Legal document automation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.