'Law firms are sleepwalking towards a disaster'

"Lawyers say nothing will ever replicate the trusted adviser role, but at the end of the day general counsel may decide to sacrifice those relationships if artificial intelligence can do the job," he said. "It will accelerate the trend of inhouse corporate teams to do more work for themselves. "Within 10-15 years, current buyers of legal services probably won't need law firms, as we currently understand them, at all." Advances in e-discovery, document automation, compliance and contract analysis were already claiming the responsibilities of junior lawyers but in another decade the number of senior lawyers would also likely shrink in response to artificial intelligence, such as IBM's legal robot "Ross" as well as machine-learning systems such as Google Brain and Google DeepMind, Mr Dwyer said. Rather than be on a back foot, director at law firm consultancy Janders Dean, Justin North said technology could also be an enabler that help firms get closer to clients.