The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts

Perhaps the forthcoming tidal wave of technology set to engulf us all will throw up new opportunities for the legal profession DL which is probably why just about every lawyer in London, so we are told, has bought a copy of this challenging, provocative, timely and important book. If you care about the future of your profession and wish to add further comment to the raging controversies surrounding it, better get yourself a copy now. (Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richard Green Chambers)

In The Future of the Professions, father-and-son authors Richard and Daniel Susskind do a remorselessly effective job of demolishing the self-deception most people engage in when comparing themselves to machines. (Richard Waters, Financial Times)

The authors are undoubtedly right that the professions will change more in the next quarter-century than they have in the previous three. (The Economist)

Remarkable work (Tom Watson, The Guardian)

This is a bold book ... The Future of the Professions helps us to recognise the professions' current methods as convoluted, self-serving rituals designed to wrap simple tasks in mystique. (Giles Wilkes, Prospect)

The Future of the Professions is a paradox that only a human mind could appreciate: the inevitable death of the professions is presented in an expert, original and witty work by two professionals whose skills (in thinking, writing and consultancy) are unlikely any time soon to be replicated by a machine. (David Pannick, The Times)

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts, is a must read for anyone who wants to gain insights into where the legal profession is going ... Nothing else I have read more clearly and convincingly elucidates the future of legal services and how technology will transform the traditional practice of law. (Dan Pinnington, Slaw.)

An act of delicious iconoclasm. (Prospect Magazine)

Both a good read and a good starter for strategic planning in professional firms (Chris Yapp, Future Tech Blog)

I suggest that everyone who considers themselves 'professional' reads this book, especially those who are aged, say, 20-45, who need to secure their role in the new world of work. The authors predict that "our professions will be dismantled incrementally". If they are right, todays lawyers need to prepare for it, and the sooner the better. (Dan Bindman, Legal Futures)

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and introduces the people and systems that will replace them. In an internet-enhanced society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. The Future of the Professions explains how increasingly capable technologies - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will place the 'practical expertise' of the finest specialists at the fingertips of everyone, often at no or low cost and without face-to-face interaction. The authors challenge the 'grand bargain' - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of their best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose five new models for producing and distributing expertise in society. The book raises profound policy issues, not least about employment (they envisage a new generation of 'open-collared workers') and about control over online expertise (they warn of new 'gatekeepers') - in an era when machines become more capable than human beings at most tasks. Based on the authors' in-depth research of more than a dozen professions, and illustrated by numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the future of the professions in the 21st century.