A pioneer in the field of information technology and law, Richard Susskind is IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and chairman of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute.

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A pioneer in the field of information technology and law, Richard Susskind is IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. He is the first Honorary Professor of Gresham College in London and the co-founder of the Centre for Law, Computers and Technology at the Law School of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He is an independent adviser to major professional firms and to national governments, including chairing the UK’s Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (2003-2008).

Professor Susskind lectures internationally and has been invited to speak in over 40 countries. His research has ranged from innovative doctoral work during the 1980s in the field of expert systems, when he also developed ground-breaking systems in law and tax, to recent work blending legal, information and management theory supported by a series of empirical research projects.

His latest of seven books, ‘The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services’, was published by OUP in 2008. In it, he argues that IT is bringing about fundamental changes in the ways lawyers and legal professionals do their work which will signal a fundamental shift in legal service from a form of advisory service to an Internet-enabled and often packaged service. Richard is also a law columnist for The Times.

Richard has a first class honours degree in law from the University of Glasgow and a doctorate in law and computers from Balliol College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Computer Society, and President of the Society for Computers and Law. He was awarded an OBE in the Millennium New Year’s Honours List for services to IT in the Law and to the Administration of Justice.

Research interests

law

Positions held at the OII

  • Advisory Board Member, September 2002 –
  • Visiting Professor, June 2009 – June 2018

Current projects

Past projects

  • The Internet and the Administration of Justice

    Recorded: 1 November 2010

    Duration: 00:03:56

    Professor Richard Susskind discusses the main themes of his lecture in the OII's "Society and the Internet" lecture series, arguing that justice requires a shift from 19th century practices to Internet-enabled administration of justice.

  • Undergraduate Lecture Series (M4): The Internet and the Administration of Justice

    1 November 2010 - 1 November 2010, 16:00:00 - 17:30:00

    This lecture explores the possibilities of change in justice administration offered by the Internet: a world of virtual courts and virtual lawyers, online dispute resolution and document drafting, and legal e-learning and communities of legal experience.

  • The Internet and Legal Services – An Oxford Internet Policy Seminar

    27 April 2010 - 27 April 2010, 12:30:00 - 14:35:00

    This is the second in a series of seminars organized with the support of Google, which has provided its office in Brussels as a venue to help stimulate and inform debate about the future of the Internet, including issues of policy and practice.

  • The End of Lawyers? The Future of Legal Service in the Internet Age

    2 December 2008 - 2 December 2008, 16:00:00 - 17:00:00

    Richard Susskind lays out the central arguments of his latest book, 'The End of Lawyers?' (OUP).

  • The Economics of Public Sector Information

    18 March 2004 - 18 March 2004, 10:00:00 - 17:00:00

    This is the first of a projected series of annual, one-day seminars, convened by the Advisory Panel on Crown Copyright (APCC). The focus of this inaugural meeting will be on the economics of public sector information (PSI).

  • Robots are taking our white collar jobs, too

    14 October 2015 Quartz


    In a forthcoming book, Richard and Daniel Susskind explore the future when, they predict, robots take over more of the professional work currently carried out by humans.