Lawyers

In different countries the legal professions are constituted and divided differently: see UK Legal Professions and US Legal Professions.

The future
In this podcast Professor Richard Susskind suggests that the profession in the future will be affected by disintermediation: just as travel agents can be removed by online transactions... Lawyers are a kind of intermediary, or interface, between the user and the law. The provision of legal services can probably be improved by outsourcing, using firms such a CPA and technological solutions (see Spindle  and Cornell ) to increase efficiency. Susskind suggests that social networking may become a model for provision of legal advice.