National The legal profession must prepare for AI

Let me end with two thoughts about the future. In their recent book on the future of the professions, Richard and Daniel Susskind predict that, as a result of AI and the Internet, the legal (and indeed other) professions will change more in the next twenty years than they have done over the last two centuries. We are all familiar with routine work being increasingly automated as a result of electronic developments. But the book suggests that professional work which appears to involve the very human qualities of expertise, creativity and interpersonal skills will be capable of being done by robots or AI. The recent electronic victories over the human world champions in in chess, quiz games and Go seem to me to support the view that this is not at least an outlandish suggestion.