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57 I L T A N E T . O R G T his article is my last for ILTA, and likely also my closing pronouncement in business, in law, and in technology—the fields in which I've spent the last 46 years of my life. At the end of 2020, I will step down as ILTA's futurist and exit from all my other career labors into what I hope will be another long and productive phase of my life. Endings are typically a time for reflection, for summing up. But I have no appetite for that. Instead, my hope here is to leave in a fit of exhortation, to move to action those who remain and ask them—ask you—to become futurists yourselves. I have never worn the cloak of futurist in the usual way—as a predictor of the future. Most often (with the notable exception of Ray Kurzweil), that kind of futurist is a carnival act. What I mean by futurist is someone who undertakes to shape the future. That's what I've been trying to do for decades. And it's what I'm asking you to do from today forward. Why do that? The world is on fire, not just with COVID-19, but with insufficiencies of every kind in every quarter. And nowhere is this more the case than in law. We have been…inadequate…to our clients' needs for justice, for fairness, and for value. Now is the time to address those shortcomings, and I am asking you to lead the global effort to remedy them. Before you scoff, hear me out. And let's begin by examining why law has been so slow to change. A Guild's Undoing. Law has long been practiced as a kind of medieval craft guild. The guilds of the Middle Ages were powerful associations of artisans that gained considerable economic power through tightly regulating the rules of entry into their crafts, as well as by closely managing working conditions and pricing. The Industrial Revolution undid most of the craft guilds. First wind and water and then steam power restructured both work and the expectations of the marketplace as to manufacturing efficiency, price, and quality of goods. As with the craft guilds, constraints on entry have, up to now, always been sufficient in law to assure the economic vitality of the profession. In law school and the long apprenticeship that follows, we are trained to be correct on the law and the facts, but not otherwise trained to be helpful in our clients' affairs. That has heretofore not mattered. Certified expertise alone has assured high hourly rates and a lineup of clientele at the vestibules of our lavish law suites. We have seldom needed to do more to mollify our clients than perhaps add word processers and email to our toolsets. But the world is signaling that it's had enough of our obliviousness. Guild practices and pricing have left most lower- and middle-class citizens and most small businesses unrepresented or underrepresented when they encounter legal problems. Legal fees are out of reach for all but the wealthiest, putting access to justice out of reach as well. A hue and cry has arisen over this particular shortcoming, and it becomes louder by the year. Even our largest and most prosperous clients have joined the hunt to complain about the disconnect between the cost of legal services and the value delivered by lawyers and law firms. Even they have been hurt by our unwillingness to heed the real needs of every client and potential client. The digital revolution has sharpened the contrast between what is now possible, and what we have actually been delivering. In an age that expects iPhone 12s and Tesla Xs, we continue to deliver black rotary handsets and smoke-belching Buicks. The Information Revolution, at least as much as the Industrial Revolution, is changing everything about how work is done and what consumers expect of the marketplace. But we linger far behind. As a consequence of these rampant dissatisfactions and the potential embodied in the digital revolution, law is now undergoing a dramatic redesign, but not at the hands of traditional lawyers. Legal automation services such as RocketLawyer and LegalZoom are redefining the infrastructure for the delivery of legal services. They may have started at the consumer end of the spectrum, but they and others are working upward quickly. Virtual entities such as Axiom, VLP, FisherBroyles and Rimon are reformulating what it means to be a firm. Blockchain-based technologies funded by our most prosperous clients are restructuring that most basic of legal instrumentalities — the contract — and offering up electronic contracts that are lawyerless, smart and self-enforcing. In-person, online, and algorithmic alternate dispute resolution services are springing up to remedy the cost, delay and unfairness inherent in an overloaded court system. And all of this is clearly just a beginning. We have yet even to scratch the surface of AI's potential. It's those changes and the threats that they present that have brought the innovation imperative to law. Both firms and clients have noticed these "Alternative Legal Service Providers" and their rapidly growing market share. Larger clients are increasingly turning to ALSPs to supply services

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