I doubt we'll see a future like this any time soon, as I doubt that a blockchain (whatever it may mean in this context) is the right tool for this.
Instead of hiring legal firms to act as a third party to transactions, two transacting companies can digitally define their roles in a smart contract. As soon as each party fulfills its part of the deal, the contract is signed off.
Even now the problem is rarely defining the role of each party in a contract. It's fulfillment where things can get nasty. How can a smart-contract trustlessly know that a contract, enacted in the real world, has been fulfilled? Trivial cases can be handled of course (eg. "if paid x release y"), but those are not the cases where you'd need a lawyer in the first place. Anything more complex and you require a trusted oracle of sorts, so essentially you're back where you started just with extra steps. Additionally some legal systems have a concept of intent (ie. what a law intends to achieve is in some cases more important than following the law to the dot), good luck with coding
that into your smart contract.
The challenge of requiring trust is already mentioned in the article:
There will also likely be a need of tech-savvy lawyers who will serve as arbitrators on a blockchain network built with a proof-of-stake model. For instance, service providers and hiring companies brought together on a blockchain platform may have issues with the quality of job delivered.
Lawyers existing as arbitrators on the network will have greater human intelligence on how to handle the issue involving the two parties and what the best consensus would be
Which makes me wonder even more what beneficial role a blockchain would play in this scenario.
Because for this:
Finally, blockchain technology can facilitate the storage of data by law firms around the world, thus, allowing court decisions to be made quickly based on early precedents that can easily be accessed from any internet-connected device.
...you don't need a blockchain. You only need a well organized, easily searchable database -- a use case for which a blockchain is one of the least adequate technologies.
Also the assumption that this would allow for quick court decisions around the world based on early precedents is an incredibly naive one. Laws and their applications differ wildly from country to country, not to mention that many countries don't even have case law.
