I have spent more time than I care to recall over the last fortnight reviewing old predictions and inviting many prominent experts to contribute their predictions to the SCL predictions blog (2018 predictions coming soon). If you have yet to be invited, that might well be the product of my inefficiency and it shouldn’t stop you contributing (the standard invitation and guide is set out below).

One slight twist this year was to invite regular contributors to look back at their successes and failures. I suggested 2008’s predictions as a fair comparator. That was trickier than I thought it might be – as one regular pointed out, some predictions were so old and detailed that it was hard to recall whether they had come true or not.

It is only fair that I look at my old predictions. Although some were just plain silly and might well have been intended as a joke, I am really quite impressed with those from late 2007 at least. Big tick for the self-congratulatory one about SCL being wonderful and making more material available ‘principally electronically’ (wow - electronically no less). Ticks too for the suggestion that distinctions between content forms will get harder to make as it is all data, though I am not sure whether the prediction that ‘browsing on a mobile phone will just seem ordinary’ was anything other than a statement of the bleeding obvious. A prediction about consolidation in the legal software supply business came true but, with a wave of start-ups transforming the field, it might not have stayed true for long.

I give myself more credit for spotting that there will be a realisation that YouTube and other viral marketing vehicles ‘can be manipulated’ – if only I received royalties for that insight, paid in roubles. A big tick too for some despair about difficulties of enforcing trading standards and, as I write this on a Monday that is apparently still Black Friday, some credit for the following observation:

The public will continue to trade with anyone offering a better price, notwithstanding all evidence that 20% of the people making best offers are crooks living abroad and daily alarmist TV and newspaper reports of Internet rip-offs.

Plus ca change …

If you want to contribute to predictions, here is the standard invitation and guide:

I am again looking to post something on the SCL web site which reflects the predictions of leading experts in IT law and legal IT – this time for 2018.

Since I have almost given up on the wider world showing any semblance of logic in its developments, it is asking a lot of you to come up with a prediction that makes any sense. But you might like to try.

Those offering predictions who have submitted before might like to look back at previous submissions and comment on their accuracy. I have been trawling through and going as far back as 2003 – quite a different legal tech world. Predictions for 2008 might make for a more sensible comparator but few contributors have that long a track record. Arguably, anything pre-Brexit vote was a different world.

The predictions supplied last year were presented as a series of blog posts and were very popular, as ever. There will be a tweet (or two) for each prediction (even the very short ones).

Feel free to look beyond the obvious IT issues and consider the issues that might arise from other forms of technological advance too. I am looking for at least 50 words per person, but if you want to provide more, even lots more, that's fine; some predictions might well make a short independent article.

Contributions will be displayed on the SCL Web site with full attribution, including contact details and description (which you may provide but please don’t make them too long). A series of Predictions blog postings will begin on 1 December. I hope to publish selections in the Dec/Jan issue of the magazine from those replying by 10 December.

Submitting a prediction will be taken to include permission for the prediction to appear on the SCL LinkedIn Group pages and every other SCL outlet.

Do feel free to encourage your colleagues and clients to contribute. I would especially value contributions from outside our normal circles – most obviously but not exclusively from technologists and e-commerce entrepreneurs who say something that IT lawyers would find useful.

Laurence Eastham
Editor, Society for Computers and Law (Computers & Law magazine and www.scl.org)
The Coach House
Studley
Calne
SN11 9LT
01249 822400

lseastham@aol.com

  

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