Abstract
This paper discusses how large law firms should re-organize themselves to maintain a competitive edge in the increasingly digitalized legal field. While providing a brief historical introduction to the rise of large law firms and the challenges posed by the rise of digital capitalism and the gig economy, the paper proposes an original and radical approach to reforming large law firms in the light of the digitalization. Among other things, the paper discusses (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 firms; and (III) the centrality of outsourcing strategies to legal tech companies and other actors in order to deliver legal services more effectively and in a more client-oriented manner.
Highlights
Digitalization has become a buzzword in the legal world, stirring significant interest in the future of the legal profession
Backed up by statistics on the numbers of junior and associate lawyers hired, George Baker and Rachel Parkin argue that the pyramid that for more than a century characterized the organizational structure of large law firms is unraveling into a diamond
In Denmark, at the forefront of this development, we find a number of large law firms, which have started to include non-lawyers in key roles within the firm, such as Plesner, Bech-Bruun, Kammeradvokaten/Poul
Summary
Digitalization has become a buzzword in the legal world, stirring significant interest in the future of the legal profession. We can suggest that Wall Street lawyers serving the robber barons of the nineteenth century gained a distance from their clients in part through the emerging antitrust law and the Progressive Era regulation more generally, and that the distance and investment in the law made them both more valuable and more legitimate.” In particular, this capacity of manipulating the law in favor of powerful clients, while at the same time, maintaining an aura of moral entrepreneurs promoting ideals of pure law, professionalism, and justice granted these lawyers a high status in American and European societies.37 The reproduction of this power elite was supported by the high economic, social, and cultural barriers of entry in the profession, which served as a filter to restrict access of a very limited number of newcomers.
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