One of the central claims in the first edition of this book, published
in 2013, was that the legal world would change more in the
next 20 years than it has in the past two centuries. Three years
on, I believe we are on course. In the intervening period, much
has happened in the legal world. To give a flavour— many major
law firms have since set up low- cost service centres to undertake
routine legal work; the Big 4 accounting firms have rapidly grown
their global legal capabilities; there has been a great upsurge of
legaltech start- ups, now well over 1,000 worldwide; the idea of
artificial intelligence (AI) in law has captured the imagination
of innovators across the profession, from market leading firms
to law student developers; in England and Wales, in our liberalized
legal regime, innumerable ‘alternative business structures’
have been launched (there are now over 500); professional bodies,
such as the Canadian Bar Association, have produced studies
on the future of legal services; senior judges have been strongly
advocating the wider use of technology; the British government
has committed to investing over £1 billion in modernizing and
digitizing the court system in England and Wales; innumerable
in- house legal departments, especially in the US, have been
appointing chief operating officers to rethink and manage their
operations; and, if readers will forgive me, more Chinese lawyers
have bought this book than English lawyers.