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As a legal professional, you can agree that reading good books is the best way to stay educated about the industry and to be on top of the inevitable changes that happen. As well as keeping abreast of issues emerging in the near and the far future.
While at it, you also need to know how to handle yourself in terms of managing the pressure as well as learning how to build up your competence as you strive to advance in this career.
And so, it is key that you keep reading the books that serve these purposes and add the value needed to help you grow. That is exactly what we got for you here, 10 of the best books for legal professionals to read in 2021 and to help you plan well for the upcoming future.
As we all can agree, legal technology is there to make your life easier!
This list contains books ranging from contract laws, technology (Legaltech, Proptech, Fintech), crypto and blockchain, among other topics that are related to the legal industry or that affect it.
1. Contract Law, Selected Source Materials, 2019 Edition.
This book is a complimentary lifetime reading material tackling issues of the Uniform Laws Commission (ULC). It discusses the topics of Uniform Electronic Transactions, E-SIGN, and Principles of Software Contracts among other digital contract matters.
The authors focused on explaining in depth how contract laws are to be applied and how you can use recent technology to manage those contracts.
2. Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future
As the name implies, this book is the book for the future of the legal profession and the entire law sector as a whole. The author, Richard Sussex, targets aspiring and young lawyers who are looking into modernizing the way the law is being practiced and the way it is being perceived by other related sectors.
Along the book, you will learn about the new legal landscape and the basic fundamentals of the journey that should be taken to develop a successful career in the law world. The author also identifies the drivers of change and the possibilities that might happen to the sector in the near future as well as the far one.
3. The Case for Culture: How to Stop Being a Slave to Your Law Firm, Grow Your Practice, and Actually Be Happy
This recently published book (Feb 2020) is set to transform your thinking as a lawyer and entrepreneur. Lawyers become business owners once they expand their legal outfit (law firm). This transformation can be difficult for them as they merge their professional passion within a business setting. This book will help make the journey easier. No more struggles with bookkeeping, marketing, and HR issues that lead to alcoholism and depression. Equip as a legal professional and entrepreneur within the legal culture.
4. Fintech: Law and Regulation
FinTech is a revolutionized way of handling financial and technology aspects. It has, in the recent past quickly developed but has also posed new challenges, especially for regulators. This book walks you through the current legal framework to these dynamic concepts in a world where technological advancement happens every day. Whether you want to get insights cross-cutting sectors such as banking, financial management, and developments in alternative funding platforms, crypto currencies, blockchain, and innovative solutions for curbing challenges on FinTech inventions. It is a guide to addressing legal and regulatory issues set to help in-house lawyers and law firms looking.
5. Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, and the Law: Regulating Automation in Personal Healthcare
With the continuous advancement of technology and the integration of robotic and artificial intelligent systems into various sectors such as healthcare, there have been issues on regulation. Concerns on data protection, inappropriate use of emotions, and privacy among others have emerged. This book provides an investigative report on the legal and regulatory implications of the growing use of personal care robots for healthcare purposes. The interplay between numerous facets of the law while highlighting the particular problems and challenges in regulating intricate cyber-physical systems and the potential legal and ethical issues
6. Token Economy: How Blockchains and Smart Contracts Revolutionize the Economy
The book educates an interdisciplinary audience ranging from the field of academia & practitioners alike. It is an ideal book to introduce you to blockchain and smart contracts and how these technologies are complementing each other. It covers aspects of blockchain and technology basics from a token perspective. The book presents a token taxonomy from an economic and governance perspective and deep-dives into selected use cases. Inside the Book: Blockchain & smart contracts have been simplified for anyone to create a token with just a few lines of code. The book refers to tokens, instead of crypto currencies, and explains why the term "token" is the more accurate term while giving an outline of the mechanisms and state of blockchain as well as the socio-economic implications of tokens.
7. How to Start & Build a Law Practice: Practice Ready - Mentor - Jobs - 6th Edition
A book series that outlines how you can start and grow your legal practice or improve your existing firm. This excellent book unpacks tips from a practicing lawyer with practical insights gained from real experiences. It is a classic ABA bestseller offering a comprehensive guide to planning, starting, and growing a successful practice. Whether it is identifying the best location for your office, marketing, setting fees, office management professional ethics, the book has got you covered.
8. The Encyclopaedia of Attorney Marketing Volume Five Professional and Personal Success (Dec 15, 2019)
This Encyclopaedia of Attorney Marketing series provides for a collection of marketing techniques to be applied when building and growing your legal practice. It helps you know how to attract more clients and at the same time, valuable and relevant ones. It will guide on how to improve workflows as you make a more strategic and rewarding legal career. Learn how to design your perfect legal career, reduce stress by avoiding burnout, and how to start a new practice as you reinvest in your training through simple and practical ideas.
9. What The Heck Is LegalTech?: Doing Agile And Being Agile: Helping Organisations Innovate And Deliver LegalTech, RegTech And FinTech Projects
Have you ever asked yourself this question? it is ok, we all did at some point. hence why the author, Roy Thomas, wrote this book to not only explain what legaltech is, but to educate us on how you can use agile approaches to adapt to the technologies out there.
The book also describes well how the technologies (legaltech, regtech, fintech and others) are here to stay and to truly revolutionize the way we operate our business and practices.
10.Global Technology and Legal Theory: Transnational Constitutionalism, Google and the European Union
This book provides for the rise and spread of the Internet and how it has hastened the flows of money globally. How much acceleration of money flows poses new legal and political problems to their regulation and control with a case study on the recent conflicts between Google and the EU? It investigates the transnational constitutional dimension of these conflicts as well as areas of competition and human rights. Additionally, it explores how such disputes drawn from the worldwide expansion of the Internet economy can be dealt with through institutional mechanisms.
Free Bonus: your guide to implementing the digital legal transformation in law firms.
This one is a gem that we personally have worked hard on producing. From adopting legal technology to implementing the right strategies even in marketing and customer service, we brought it all together to make an effective guide that will help you in your digital transformation process.
The book is broken down into steps and tools that are focused on an efficient way of digital transformation, and at the same time, we made sure that we use a nice way to address those points so as to make the book easily digestible.
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These books will definitely equip you with an all-inclusive mindset as you live every day as a legal professional. They are informative, simple to read and understandable, with a sense of legal humour.
What about your recommendations? What other books would you advise us to read this year?
Let us know in the comments sections below.
Enjoy!
