Professor Richard Susskind OBE is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to major professional firms and to national governments. His main area of expertise is the future of professional service, with particular reference to information technology. He has worked on legal technology for over 30 years. He lectures internationally and has been invited to speak in over 40 countries and has addressed audiences (in person and electronically), numbering more than 200,000. He has written and edited numerous books, including Expert Systems in Law (OUP, 1987), The Future of Law (OUP, 1996) , Transforming the Law (OUP, 2000), The Susskind Interviews: Legal Experts in Changing Times (Sweet & Maxwell, 2005), The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services (OUP, 2008) and has written over 100 columns for The Times. His work has been translated into 10 languages.

He has advised on numerous government inquiries and, since 1998, has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England. In 2003, he was appointed by the Cabinet Office as Chair of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information, a position he held until 2008. Richard is President of the Society for Computers and Law and is Chair of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute where he is also a Visiting Professor. He also hold professorships at Gresham College, London, and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

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 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.