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26 SAcLJ 325 (2014)
Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future

handle is hein.journals/saclj26 and id is 329 raw text is: Book Review TOMORROW'S LAWYERS An Introduction to Your Future* by Richard Susskind CHOO Han Teck LLB (Hons) (National University of Singapore), LLM (Cambridge); Judge of the Republic of Singapore. 1 There is a generation of lawyers in practice today who started practising law before the word-processor (now obsolete), the telefax (becoming obsolete) and the e-mail. They remember the slow, expensive and fading thermal paper copying machines; the carbon paper; and the Local Urgent Mail. They now meet and deal with lawyers born in the digital age, whom Marc Prensky described as Digital Natives.1 The rest are Digital Immigrants. The old ways of doing things have changed and the old ways of learning, Prensky contends, are gone. Digital Natives are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, are networked most of their lives, are used to receiving information really quickly and love multi-tasking. 2 Technology, thus, has been the single factor that has vastly altered the shape of commerce in modern times, and that in turn has altered legal practice. However, in the case of the latter, many other aspects are also changing in common law jurisdictions around the world. Taking stock today with the view of planning for the future is not just a matter of solving complications that might have been caused by technology, for if that were the case, solutions would eventually be found. The changing shape of legal practice is not merely a complicated matter. It is a complex one. Richard Susskind's book was written to provide tomorrow's lawyers and legal educators with an accessible account of the pressing issues that currently face the legal profession and the justice system. It was written in the context of legal practice in the UK but similar issues arise also in America.2 3 The broad areas in which Susskind discusses the legal profession may be best considered in the light of the situation in America where the financial crisis in 2008 had a severe impact on the legal profession. The general picture since, up to 2013, has been one of downsizing, Oxford University Press, 2013. 1 Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001) 9 On the Horizon. 2 See Michael H Trotter, Declining Prospects: How Extraordinary Competition and Compensation are Changing America's Law Firms (CreateSpace, 2012). (2014) 26 SAcLJ Book Review: Tomorrow's Lawyers

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