Richard has been IT Adviser to Lord Bingham from 1998 to 2000, to Lord Woolf from 2000 to 2005, to Lord Phillips 2005 to 2008, and to Lord Judge, since October 2008. In this capacity, he works closely with senior judges in England and Wales in helping them identify and articulate the most promising applications of IT for the Judiciary. Also in this role, he works alongside politicians and officials in the Ministry of Justice (formerly the Department for Constitutional Affairs and before that the Lord Chancellor's Department) and with the Court Service.

Over the years, Richard has advised on various UK government inquiries and initiatives, including Lord Woolf's Access to Justice Inquiry (1995-96), the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Review (1997-98), the Review of Tribunals (2000-01), the Criminal Courts Review (2000-01), the Lord Chancellor's Department Civil Justice IT Strategy Group (1997-2001) and, since 1990, the Information Technology and Courts Committee (ITAC). Details about most of these initiatives can be found at www.justice.gov.uk

Richard has been a member of the Society for more than 30 years and was its Chairman from 1990 to 1992. The Society is the leading UK organization for legal professionals advising and practising within the IT sector. Its mission is to be the community for lawyers who understand IT and the related legal and business practice issues and provides thought leadership, best practice, education and standards in these areas. See www.scl.org.

Richard played an important role in the establishment of the Oxford Internet Institute and, since 2001, has been a Founding Member of its Advisory Board.

The Oxford Internet Institute was founded as a department of the University of Oxford in 2001, as an academic centre for the study of the societal implications of the Internet. The current home, in a building owned by Balliol College, was formally opened in July 2003. The OII’s academics are engaged in a variety of research projects covering social, economic, political, legal, industrial, technical, and ethical issues of the Internet in everyday life, governance and democracy, science and learning and shaping the Internet. For further information, see www.oii.ox.ac.uk.

At the UCL Faculty of Laws, Richard is also a member of the Advisory Board of the UCL Judicial Institute, a centre that is devoted to research and teaching about the Judiciary in the UK. See more details at UCL's website

The College was founded in 1597, is supported by the City of London Corporation and the livery company, The Mercers. There are eight Gresham Professors - in music, divinity, commerce, rhetoric, geometry, physic, astronomy, and law. The purpose of the College is and always has been to raise awareness of the latest learning in each of these disciplines. To that end, each professor presents a series of lectures each year.

Richard's lectures took the form of 20 public discussions that he held with distinguished legal guests, each of whom, in quite different ways, was exerting considerable influence on the development of legal practice and the administration of justice, both in Great Britain and beyond. Through frank, friendly, and often light-hearted conversation, Richard explored major trends in advanced legal systems; significant challenges facing modern justice systems; the thinking underlying recent reforms and changes; and the likely shape of the legal world in years to come.

His guests included Lord Woolf, Lord Falconer, Cherie Booth QC, Lord Saville, and Lord Irvine. A revised set of transcripts of the interviews is now published as a book - The Susskind Interviews: Legal Experts in Changing Times (Sweet & Maxwell, 2005).

Details of the current programme of lectures at Gresham College can be found at www.gresham.ac.uk.

Over the years, his teaching responsibilities have include lecturing to undergraduates, leading Masters seminars (the full-time and pioneering distance learning Ll.M degrees in IT and Telecommunications Law courses), supervising research students, and acting as an external examiner for doctoral work in the UK.

In 2002, working with Professor Paul Maharg, Richard produced several hours of web-cast, a very early legal e-learning resource that is still available on the law school network. Students at all levels (including those working towards their Diplomas in Legal Practice) are thereby able, essentially, to attend a virtual tutorial on the impact of IT on the legal world.

Richard also organizes the Centre's annual retreat (held each year since 1993), an event which brings together, at Ross Priory, on the banks of Loch Lomond, a small group of leading lawyers in a two-day seminar that focuses on the latest developments in legal systems.

Further information on Strathclyde Law School can be found on their website

When first set up, APPSI was called the Advisory Panel on Crown Copyright. While Chair of APPSI, its terms of reference were:

• to advise Ministers on how to encourage and create opportunities in the information industry for greater reuse of Government information;
• to advise the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office about changes and opportunities in the information industry, so that the licensing of Crown copyright information is aligned with current and emerging developments; and
• to advise on the impact of the complaints procedures under the Information Fair Trader Scheme.

The sponsor department of the Panel is now the Ministry of Justice. Richard completed his term as Chair in April 2008.

Further details about the work of the Panel can be found at www.hmso.gov.uk/appsi.

Richard's leadership of APPSI built on his experience as a member of the Modernising Government Project Board (run by the Cabinet Office, 1999-2001). It also dovetailed effectively with his membership, from 2003 until 2005, of the Freedom of Information Project Board at the then Department for Constitutional Affairs.