**1. Introduction**

Digitalization has become a buzzword in the legal world, stirring significant interest in the future of the legal profession. A host of innovative legal-tech companies have entered the market of legal service providers, presently challenging the lawyers' monopoly over the practice of the law and, ultimately, altering the mode of production in the legal field.<sup>1</sup> We have already witnessed a significant digitalization in due diligence, contract review, legal research, e-discovery, prediction technology, and document automation, while tools such as client portals and intranet-based collaborative platforms are becoming more sophisticated every day.<sup>2</sup> These developments did not go unnoticed by the giants of the tech industry. Recently, the online retailer Amazon has made its first step into the legal services industry, launching a curated network of IP law firms that provide trademark registration services at pre-negotiated rates.<sup>3</sup> There is no doubt that Google, Microsoft, and the like will soon follow suit, thus contributing to the already ongoing de-professionalization, corporatization, and, ultimately, commodification of legal practice. In the light of the above, commentators have predicted the disruption of the legal field,<sup>4</sup> the future replacement of lawyers by robots,<sup>5</sup> and a radical restructuring of the modalities of delivering legal services.<sup>6</sup> Others have argued that lawyers should change their way of

<sup>1</sup> See, Valentin Pivovarov (2018). 713% Growth: Legal Tech Set an Investment Record in 2018. Forbes. Available online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/valentinpivovarov/2019/01/15/legaltechinvestment2018/#d2b100b7c2ba, claiming that only in 2018, USD 1663 million has been invested in legal tech.

<sup>2</sup> For an overview of these dynamics, see (Caserta and Madsen 2019; Thornton 2019).

<sup>3</sup> See, Robert Ambrogi (2019). With IP Accelerator, Amazon Edges Into The Legal Services Arena. Above The Law. Available online: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/10/with-ip-accelerator-amazon-edges-into-the-legal-services-arena/. For some, this constitutes the beginning of a long-term strategy to gain control of large sectors of the legal market for service providers. Interview with CEO of English large law firm, 1 May 2020.

<sup>4</sup> (McGinnis and Pearce 2014).

<sup>5</sup> (Rostain 2017).

<sup>6</sup> (Susskind 2008, 2013; Susskind and Susskind 2017).

working and become T-shaped lawyers,<sup>7</sup> get a business education,<sup>8</sup> and/or act more as transaction engineers than as classic advocates.<sup>9</sup>

In response to this increased digitalization of the legal field, especially large law firms<sup>10</sup> across the globe have begun to massively invest in legal-tech solutions in an attempt to maintain a competitive edge.<sup>11</sup> Some firms even developed incubators directed at creating and developing technology.<sup>12</sup> Yet, at least for now, these initial movements have not been coupled with substantial changes in the internal organizational structure of large law firms. The result is that such firms are not fully exploiting the potential that new technologies offer to legal practice, and they thus risk losing the dominant position in the market of legal service providers which they enjoyed since the early 20th century.

This paper discusses the organizational changes that large law firms should endeavor in order to maintain a competitive edge in the increasingly digitalized present legal field. To this purpose, the paper begins by recapitulating the dynamics that allowed large law firms to become the contemporary leading business model for legal service providers. The focus is on what has come to be widely known as the "tournament of lawyers", which has arguably been the main driver of the growth of large law firms in the last decades.<sup>13</sup> In the second section, I discuss some of the dynamics that led the business model of large law firms to crack during the 1970s and 1980s, namely, the excessive commodification of the practice of the law and its internal bureaucratization. In the third section, I argue that the entrance of new technologies in the legal field has exacerbated the ongoing crisis of large law firms by continuing to erode the classic politics of professionalism<sup>14</sup> in favor of the dynamics of digital capitalism and the gig-economy.<sup>15</sup> The fourth section presents and analyzes a host of recent proposals for reforming large law firms, such as, among others, the one of the Boston Consulting Group and the Bucerius Law School<sup>16</sup> as well as the one provided by the Cambridge Strategy Group.<sup>17</sup> While valuable, it will be argued that these proposals share the shortcoming of trying to make digital developments fit into the present structure of large law firms. For this reason, in my view, they will not allow these firms to fully embrace the potential of new technologies. Accordingly, in the fifth section, I propose an original and more radical approach to reforming large law firms in the light of the digitalization. Among other

<sup>7</sup> The T-shaped lawyer is the lawyer with a set of interdisciplinary skills developed to face the challenges of technological developments and to deliver legal advice more efficiently. See, (Mak 2017).

<sup>8</sup> Even more than they do today. See, (Jacob et al. 2017).

<sup>9</sup> (Fenwick and Vermeulen 2019).

<sup>10</sup> The term "large law firm" is a relative and, somehow, elusive concept, especially in the light of the fact that there are a number of indicators by means of which one can measure and assess law firms (number of lawyers, revenue per partner, partner to associate ratio, and so on). For the purpose of this paper, I adopt an overly inclusive definition characterized by the following features, namely that these firms: (I) provide full-service, as they cover the most important areas of law; (II) are generally considered top-tier (or elite) law firms in their country; (III) employ a significant number of attorneys, usually 200 and often many more; (4) their lawyers have the best salaries in the industry; (IV) their lawyers are often recruited from the top law schools in the country; (V) their lawyers are expected to bill about 2.300 h per year. This, in turn, covers what is often described in the literature as global mega law firms (Flood 1996; Galanter 2014) and BigLaw (Galanter and Palay 1991; Galanter and Henderson 2008).

<sup>11</sup> See, for instance, the various tech reposts of the American Bar Association https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law\_ practice/publications/techreport/abatechreport2019/.

<sup>12</sup> This is the case of Fuse, launched by the United Kingdom firms Allen & Overy, and of Next Law, who established the Dentons law firms. See, How Are Law Firms Investing in Technology to Remain Cutting-Edge? *Alvarez Technology Group*. Available online: https://www.alvareztg.com/how-are-law-firms-investing-in-technology-to-remain-cutting-edge/.

<sup>13</sup> (Galanter and Palay1990, 1991) But see, (Wilkins and Gulati 1998; Galanter and Henderson 2008). The core institutional characteristic of this organizational structure of large law firms is the "promotion-to-partner tournament", structured around a simple promise made by senior lawyers (partners), who have excess human capital, to junior lawyers (associates), with little human capital but abundant supply of labor. In return for the associates' work, the partners promise that at the end of the probationary period, they will promote a fixed percentage of them to partnership (Galanter and Palay 1991, pp. 77–120).

<sup>14</sup> In general terms, professionalism is a relationship among producers, consumers, and the state for the production and distribution of expert services (Abel 2003, p. XV). Thus, the politics of professionalism involves two main aspects: (1) the political confrontation between governments and the professions in relation to the regulation of the production and distribution of expert services and (2) the internal conflict engendered by different segments of the professions taking different views as to how to respond to the opportunities and threats triggered by political, societal, and technological changes.

<sup>15</sup> (Schiller 1999, p. XVI).

<sup>16</sup> (Vieth et al. 2016).

<sup>17</sup> (Cambridge Strategy Group 2018).

things, I will discuss: (I) the partnership as organizational tool for large law firms in an increasingly digital and agile legal field; (II) the importance of multidisciplinary practices and of the relationship between lawyers and non-lawyers within law firms; and (III) the centrality of outsourcing strategies to legal tech companies and other actors in order to deliver legal services in a more client-oriented manner. The final section draws broader conclusions on the sociology of large law firms in the light of the societal changes triggered by the rise of a digital capitalism. In particular, I will argue that large law firms would benefit from an internal process of de-bureaucratization that would rebalance the practice of the law in favor of a renewed ethos of professionalism. This new professionalism, I shall argue, will set the basis for a freer, autonomous, and more creative legal practice and, ultimately, for a return of large law firm lawyers to embody the most respected form of delivery of legal services in both the private and public sphere.

This article is part of a broader project on the digitalization of large law firms in Europe<sup>18</sup> inspired by the seminal work of sociologists such as Luc Boltanski and Richard Sennett on the new culture of capitalism.<sup>19</sup> In terms of methodology, the article builds upon the existing literature on the impact of new technologies on legal work and complement it with seventeen semi-structured interviews with CEOs of legal-tech companies and senior partners as well as heads of innovation of large law firms in Denmark and the United Kingdom.<sup>20</sup> The reason for focusing on Denmark and the United Kingdom is two-fold. Firstly, because historically in each of these two countries the legal profession positions itself rather differently vis-à-vis the state. Similar to the United States, the English legal profession developed largely in autonomy from the state and, at least in the early days, it organized itself in response to expanding market opportunities and entrepreneurially led patters of industrialization and urbanization.<sup>21</sup> Like in other countries of continental Europe (most notably, Germany and France), the Danish legal profession developed in close relationship with the rise of the modern (bureaucratic) state, which provided the base for the growing utilization of legal services, it being the power base of the legal profession and the main purchaser of expert legal knowledge.<sup>22</sup> Although in recent times there has been a convergence toward the marketization and commodification of legal practice, this different relationship between the legal profession and the state in the two countries impacted

<sup>18</sup> The project, DigiProf—A Digitalized Legal Profession: Challenge or Opportunity (See the project's webpage https: //jura.ku.dk/icourts/research/digiprof-a-digitalized-legal-profession/), is financed by the Danish foundation *Dreyers Fond* and is focused on understanding the broader and multiform impact on new technologies in the European landscape of private law firms. The project is set to explore how changes in the capitalist forms of production have cultural, organisational, and ultimately societal implications, not only for the practice of the law, but also the work environment and the legal professionals' daily life.

<sup>19</sup> (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999; Sennett 2006).

<sup>20</sup> This article constitutes a preliminary study on the impact that digitalization is having and will have on large law firms; the study involves a realtively limited amount of actors interviewed and the limited focus on the United Kingdom and Denmark. Future studies within the framework of the DigiProf project will deepen the analysis by both testing these preliminary results on a large number of actors and by adding case studies studies from Germany, France, and Italy. Given the preliminary nature of the study, it is important to clarify the role that the interviews have played in the construction of my narrative. In broader terms, the DigiProf project is aimed at constructing original research based on extensive field work on large law firms in the above mentioned countries. It will do so by relying on a Bourdieusian approach with the goal of exploring the construction of a digitalized legal field and the underlying power battles that the rise of digital capitalism will bring about in the organizational structure of the profession (Bourdieu et al. 1991). For the more limited purpose of this paper, the interviews occupy a more marginal role as they have been used to complement existing visions of the impact of new technologies on legal work and on the legal profession. The data collected during field work were also particularly important to construct the more constructive part of this paper in which I propose to reform several aspects of the existing model of the large law firm. While my proposal is not entirely based on the interview, my conversation with my interviewees played an important role in shaping and refining my views. A word on the ethical guidelines followed during the field work is in place. At the beginning of each interview, the interviewees were provided with a brief but comprehensive explanation of the project and with an informal statement that the interviews would be recorded, but that the informant would remain anonymous when and if some of the statements realeased in the interviews were to be cited. All the interviewees accepted these ethical guidelines without problems.

<sup>21</sup> (Rueschemeyer 1986). The autonomy of the profession in the Anglosaxon/common law world, however, should not be overblown, as in this context also there were instances of state-sponsored professionalization. But, in general, the claim still stands.

<sup>22</sup> (Hammerslev 2003). See in general, (Weber 1978).

significantly on the organizational structure, ideology of professionalism, and working culture of legal professionals in Denmark and the United Kingdom. This, in turn, has caused digital developments to have a different impact on large law firms and the legal profession more generally. Secondly, the reason to focus on Denmark and the United Kingdom is given by their different level of liberalization of legal services in the two countries. The English market has been substantially liberalized, starting from the 1970s and culminating with the Legal Service Act of 2007.<sup>23</sup> The same cannot be said for the Danish market in which, for instance, restrictions for law firms ownership still apply. Presently, law firms in Denmark can only be owned by people who work in the firm, and lawyers must own at least 90 percent.<sup>24</sup> In turn, this different level of liberalization will also influence how new technologies are to make their way into large law firms, and, in the legal field more generally.
