Don’t Fear the Robot, Says Richard Susskind

It may sound outlandish to hear about law firms building software programs to help navigate increasingly complex regulatory regimes, but it’s not fiction.

Last week, Big Law Business reported on how Allen & Overy and Axiom both have developed software — that cuts out a component of work that would otherwise have been handled by humans — to help banks deal with new regulations on derivative contracts.

To answer whether the future is now, and we’ll see more legal work performed by machines we tracked down the U.K.-based technologist Richard Susskind, a close observer of the legal profession who earlier this year co-authored the book, “The ...