Professor Luke Mason considers the seismic shift taking place within legal services, and its impact on firms and legal education
- Discusses how the legal profession is moving from simply providing services to delivering technology-driven products.
- Considers how best to prepare the next generation of lawyers.
The explosion of new technology, including but not limited to generative artificial intelligence (AI), has affected every industry, from finance and transport all the way through to health and childcare. Across every sector, we have seen a cultural shift from the provision of services to a consumption of digital products—and law is no exception, despite being slightly behind the trend due to its conservative and complex nature.
We already know technology has streamlined many legal processes, such as drafting and reviewing. However, there is a larger shift at hand and it is happening behind the scenes: the expectation that you can engage with services via products. This confluence of technological shifts, coinciding with law being a factor on all of these platforms, means the platform itself is now becoming a
