Digitalization and Promotion: An Empirical Study in a Large Law Firm
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12060 |
| Published date | 01 October 2014 |
| Date | 01 October 2014 |
Digitalization and Promotion: An
Empirical Study in a Large Law Firm
Marion Brivot, Helen Lam1and Yves Gendron
Faculty of Business, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, 2325 rue de la Terrasse, Université Laval, Québec G1V 0A6,
Canada, and 1Faculty of Business, Athabasca University, #301, 22 Sir Winston Churchill Avenue, St Albert,
Alberta T8N 1B4, Canada
Corresponding author email: Marion.Brivot@fsa.ulaval.ca
In law firms, the number of hours that associates work reportedly plays a preponderant
role in promotion decisions. We build on previous research in this area by distinguishing
the effect of ‘development hours’ from ‘billable hours’ on promotions and by assessing the
extent to which billable hours are still important criteria today, in digitalized environ-
ments where efficiency is, presumably, likely to matter more than working long hours. We
also examine whether certain types of behaviours, like associates’ interactions with
technology, may be associated directly or indirectly with a higher likelihood of promo-
tion. We studied these questions in the context of a large corporate law firm in continental
Europe, focusing on the promotion of 93 lawyers between 2005 and 2010. We found that
both billable and development hours are still significant positive predictors of promotions
and that associates’ ability to use the case firm’s computer-mediated knowledge manage-
ment system productively is indirectly rewarded by promotion. This research reasserts the
fundamental role of billable hours as one of the primary means for evaluating lawyers’
work and suggests that using knowledge management systems gives associates an edge in
the race for promotion, particularly in law firms moving along the ‘evolutionary path’ of
legal service, from bespoke to commoditized work (Susskind, R. (2010). The End of
Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Introduction
Promotion criteria in law firms are diverse
(Galanter and Henderson, 2008; Malhotra,
Morris and Smets, 2010; Morris and Pinnington,
1998); they include technical skills, management
aptitudes, the capacity to maintain relationships
with peers and clients and, increasingly, the ability
to generate new business and collect large fees.
Among these criteria, hours worked reportedly
predominate. Landers, Rebitzer and Taylor
(1996, p. 330) explain why:
There is nearly always some degree of revenue
sharing among equity partners, which makes each
individual partner’s income dependent on the will-
ingness of other partners in the firm to work hard.
Since the money making activities of other partners
are hard to observe directly, there are strong incen-
tives to allow into the partnership only those asso-
ciates with a propensity to work very hard. In this
setting it is natural to expect law firms to develop
mechanisms to screen out associates inclined
towards short hours.
Survey data collected in two large law firms
provide empirical support to Landers, Rebitzer
and Taylor’s prediction that hours worked
(including hours billed) is the chief criterion in
promotion decisions. This is consistent with
Leblebici’s (2007) argument that corporate law
firms have traditionally relied on billable
hours to evaluate lawyers’ labour, both inter-
nally (for promotions) and externally (for client
billing).
We thank the Fonds Québécois de Recherche Société et
Culture (FQRSC) for helping fund this research. We are
also grateful for Roy Suddaby’s, Tim Morris’s and Aziza
Laguecir’s useful comments on earlier versions of this
paper.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 805–818 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12060
© 2014 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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