Living document · revised 2026-07-29
There is no shortage of overviews of the new legal professions, and each says something different. That is not carelessness. No generally accepted classification exists, and worse, the frameworks do not even classify the same thing: sometimes professions, sometimes job titles, sometimes functions of a legal department, sometimes skill profiles. So the catalogue below says, for every profession, who names it that way, and behind it sits a map of those frameworks and what each one actually sorts.
What is here:
Twenty-eight professions, each with what the person does and who names it that way. The titles come from the sources; sorting them into nine groups is mine. The frameworks use different names for the same work, so one role sits in three lists under three titles; the groups sort them by what the person actually does. The maturity level is my estimate based on how many sources name the role.
01
Work that cannot be decomposed into steps or handed to a system. Susskind does not count it as new, because it persists.
Handles what cannot be standardized: complex or high-value matters where the client needs a new solution rather than an off-the-shelf procedure. Susskind adds a second component to the expertise, trust: conveying advice personally and in strict confidence.
Named by: Richard Susskind
An experienced lawyer without deep specialisation whose reach is extended by standardization and technology. Takes the work that needs a lawyer but not a costly specialist.
Named by: Richard Susskind
02
Turning law into a form a system, or someone other than the author, can work with.
Analyses the law, distils it into standard working practices and embeds those in a system. Susskind warns this is not junior work: building a system that solves many problems is harder than answering one. NALP found the same post in a Fenwick & West job listing, described there as document automation and template management.
Named by: Richard Susskind, NALP (USA) · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Owns the contract and template assembly stack. Differs from the knowledge engineer by not modelling law in general but a specific document production line.
Named by: NALP (USA), Reframe
The oldest role in the whole list. NALP found it as “Director, Knowledge Management Services”; both CLOC and ACC carry it as a functional area of its own.
Named by: NALP (USA), CLOC, ACC
03
Building the systems legal work runs on.
Susskind defines the role against the two groups that occupied this space earlier: technologists who wandered into law, and lawyers with a hobby interest in computers. He wants instead someone trained in both, who needs no interpreter.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Designs and builds automated legal workflows end to end. Reframe puts it in a US band of $140–180k with tools like Zapier, Make or Bryter.
Named by: Reframe
Builds their own systems without a programmer. Susskind traces it to the rule-based “shells” of the 1980s and immediately marks the limit: pilots and demonstrators yes, a fully operational system still needs one.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 3
Owns the reference architecture for enterprise deployments. Appears only in Reframe, that is, so far only as a market job title.
Named by: Reframe
04
The question of who the service is for and whether that person can actually use it.
Opens Susskind’s table in the third edition. Not about looks but about what the system contains: guiding users through complex law, replacing bulky procedure with leaner rules, and designing for disadvantaged users from the start. Susskind ties it to building court systems.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 3
Decides what gets built. At legal software vendors, owns a product line: contract management, eDiscovery or legal AI.
Named by: Reframe
Develops new ways of delivering legal service, not new knowledge of law. Susskind insists dead ends do not count as failures and that an absence of failure signals a shortage of adventure. I have no evidence of anyone doing this as a job in Czechia.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
05
The most institutionalised branch. It has its own associations, frameworks and conferences.
Decomposes a matter and finds the best supplier for each part. Susskind stresses this is not work for business or systems analysts, because decomposing legal work needs legal insight. NALP found the post in a K&L Gates job listing.
Named by: Richard Susskind, NALP (USA) · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
The best-evidenced role in the list; five frameworks name it independently. Allocates work across providers, holds time, budget and quality, and pulls it back into one service. Susskind likens it to a production manager and derives the discipline from logistics.
Named by: Richard Susskind, NALP (USA), CLOC, ACC · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Runs the legal department as an operation: systems, vendors, process and numbers. A broad title covering CLOC’s twelve areas or ACC’s fourteen; what it means in practice differs between employers.
06
The fastest growing branch and the least settled in what it calls things.
Looks for correlations and patterns in legal and non-legal material. In the third edition Susskind added that they will also build systems making legal predictions. He assumes a background in mathematics, programming or the natural sciences.
Named by: Richard Susskind, Reframe · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Turns bulky documents and complex language into charts, diagrams and maps. Susskind grounds it in an observation: the language of the boardroom is no longer the long document but the slide deck.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 3
Designs and evaluates prompts and LLM pipelines. Named by a single source and that source is marketing material, so whether it stays a role of its own or is absorbed into the broader legal engineer is open.
Named by: Reframe
Finding and managing electronic evidence in litigation. An established occupation in the US with its own tooling; no direct Czech counterpart, since Czech civil procedure has no discovery.
Named by: NALP (USA), ACC, Reframe
07
The preventive layer. Susskind’s fence at the top of the cliff rather than an ambulance at the bottom.
Susskind calls this the most urgently needed and longest overdue role in the list. Does not wait for the client’s question but hunts for threats: risk reviews, litigation readiness, compliance audits, analysis of contractual commitments. The best of them, he says, will in time be eligible for chief risk officer.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Analyses regulation and turns it into internal processes and rules. NALP found the post in an Amazon job listing, where it also carried project management and workflow coordination.
Named by: NALP (USA), ACC
System reliability and security, data privacy, cleansing data of bias, regular algorithm audits and defence against attack. Susskind notes that firms and courts largely ignore the role, though downtime or a leak could kill a legal business. NALP lists it as a cybersecurity/data security specialist.
Named by: Richard Susskind, NALP (USA) · in Susskind’s table since edition 3
08
The only branch that is about authorisation rather than job classification.
Advises clients on how to use the online forum. Susskind adds that careers also open for the e-negotiators and e-mediators themselves, whose intervention the process requires. A litigator, he says, need not appear in a courtroom to add value, but does need a new set of skills.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Watches the quality of content in communities where lay people trade legal experience. Susskind grounds the role in a risk: people rely on that guidance although non-experts wrote it, so it needs an editor who corrects errors and confusions.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 3
May independently do a defined range of legal work for a fee without being a lawyer. Runs as a regulated programme in several US states. Czechia has no equivalent and its Advocacy Act does not provide for one.
Named by: NCSC, IAALS (USA)
09
Work about the legal service rather than inside it.
Advises legal departments on what is not law: strategy, team building, panel selection, financial control, introducing technology. Susskind predicts it will become a distinct discipline and takes his precedent from the Big 4, where consulting grew out of audit.
Named by: Richard Susskind · in Susskind’s table since edition 2
Puts purchased legal software to work at the customer: configuration, migration, training, change management. A role that arises on the vendor side, not among lawyers.
Named by: Reframe
Sets the firm’s prices and pricing models. NALP lists it as “Legal Pricing Manager/Director” with responsibility for the whole pricing system; it grew out of client pressure away from the billable hour.
Named by: NALP (USA)
Legal work is splitting into judgment, knowledge, technology, design, operations, data, risk and new ways of delivering legal help. The new professions appear in those splits, not as one new estate alongside lawyers.
The frameworks below do not compete, because each sorts something else. The “status” column says where the claim on this page comes from: either a source I opened and checked it against, or somebody else’s description of it. What I did not verify, I do not assert.
| Framework | Year | What it classifies | Items | Nature | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomorrow’s Lawyers, 2. vydání / 2nd edition Richard Susskind | 2017 | Future roles for lawyers | 10 + 2 | Scholarly book, prediction | verified |
| Tomorrow’s Lawyers, 3. vydání / 3rd edition Richard Susskind | 2023 | The same roles, revised | 15 + 2 | Scholarly book, prediction | verified |
| Report of the Emerging Legal Jobs Work Group NALP (USA) | 2015 | New positions actually advertised | — | Research report of a professional association | verified |
| Core 12 CLOC | — | Functional areas of legal operations | 12 | Industry association framework | verified |
| Legal Operations Maturity Model 2.0 ACC | 2017 → | Maturity of the same functions | — | Self-assessment tool | verified |
| LIFTED Singapore Academy of Law | 2026 → | Career and competency map for the whole sector | — | Institutional framework of a state academy | second-hand |
| Legal-Tech Jobs Taxonomy Reframe | 2026 | Job titles as used on the market today | 7 | Marketing material | verified |
| Allied Legal Professionals, Community Justice Workers NCSC, IAALS (USA) | — | New providers of legal help | — | Survey of regulatory programmes | second-hand |
The most cited source in the catalogue above deserves a note. Susskind’s table is usually quoted in its second-edition form, with ten roles. The third edition has fifteen, and differs on the inside as well.
Five roles that are not in the second edition:
Beyond the five new roles, passages inside the original ones were rewritten. This is a comparison of both texts, not a borrowed summary.
| Where | 2nd edition (2017) | 3rd edition (2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Dateline at the end of the chapter | „in 2016" | „in 2022" |
| Expert trusted adviser | „Clients think otherwise." | „Many clients think otherwise and say that lawyers overstate these claims of high craftsmanship." |
| Expert trusted adviser | „in a confidential manner" | „in strict confidence" |
| Legal hybrid | „in 72 hours" | „in a couple of days" |
| Legal data scientist | (věta chybí / absent) | „They will also develop systems that can make all manner of legal predictions" |
If looking at this list unnerves current lawyers, then I am doing my job. This is a wake-up call.
I prefer to define lawyers as people whose work is devoted to helping legal clients with their legal difficulties, rather than in the more limited terms of their original training and subsequent career path.
The whole section is downloadable as a single JSON file, both languages included, with the verification status of every source and the maturity level of every role. No sign-up, no key.
My own text is CC BY 4.0. Susskind’s role names and quotations are from his book and appear as quotations.
Everything the section rests on, plus what I took over without reading it myself. Marked the same way as in the framework table: “verified” means I opened the source and checked the claim against it.
The other open corpora on this site sit together under tools and data. For the legal side of what this work changes there is the AI Act card, and what Czech courts have said about it is collected in the case-law overview (in Czech).
Your choice stays in this browser and carries over to other pages.
This is what body text will look like.