Uberizing the Legal Profession? Lawyer Autonomy and Status in the Digital Legal Market
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12485 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Yao Yao |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12485
58:3 September 2020 0007–1080 pp. 483–506
Uberizing the Legal Profession? Lawyer
Autonomy and Status in the Digital
Legal Market
Yao Ya o
Abstract
The online gig economy has disrupted many occupations in the past decade, but
only more recentlyhas it had an impact on professional fields. The recency of this
trend indicates a need for understanding the impact of the online gig economy
on professional workers. Using interview data from lawyers who work on one
of China’s most successful online legal service platforms, this study finds that
supplementary income and flexibility are the two major motives for lawyers
to work online. Nevertheless, when working online, lawyers face lower intra-
professional status and lower professional autonomy. Despite its growth, the
digital legal market is imposing a minimal threat to the traditional legal market
due to the lack of interference in labour supply and demand between these two
markets.
1. Introduction
The online gig economy has found its wayinto many aspects of our daily lives.
Increasingly, highly skilled professionals, such as the doctors and lawyers,
are finding themselves participating in this rising wave of online gig work.
A simple Google search for ‘online doctors’ provides dozens of links to
websites where a patient can chat with a remotely matched doctor. The
legal profession, however, has been less open than the medical profession
to adopt technological innovations (Susskind and Susskind 2015). In most
Westerncountries, the volume of online legal services remains small. In China,
however, Internet-based legal services are already an important part of the
Ministry of Justice’s national strategy to construct a public legal service
network. As of April 2017, there were 93 online platforms where lawyers
Yao Yao is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources,
University of Toronto.
C
2019 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
484 British Journal of Industrial Relations
and other legal professionals provide services (Li 2018), and some platforms
claim to have tens of thousands of lawyers registered. These platforms are
not merely online job boards or lawyer finders: job boards and lawyer finders
connect lawyers with potential work opportunities, but they usually do not
facilitate service delivery, handle transactions or track service quality as the
platforms do.
Research on labour in the gig economy has attracted growing interest
from various disciplines.Although many studies emphasize the heterogeneity
across labour platforms in terms of working conditions and worker profiles
(Howcroft and Bergvall-K˚
areborn 2019; Meli´
an-Gonz´
alez and Bulchand-
Gidumal 2018; Tvede and Christensen 2016), most published empirical
research to date examines either low-skilled occupations, such as ride-sharing
drivers (e.g. Chen 2018; Hall and Krueger 2018), or a mixture of high-
skilled workers without a focus on specific occupations (e.g. Horton 2017).
Because professions generally have high social status, specialized expertise
and exclusive control over entry (Abbott 1988; Freidson 1970, 2001; Larson
1977), a more detailed examination of this segment of the online labour
market is needed. Unlike most Uber and Lyft drivers, licensed professionals,
such as doctors and lawyers, can usually expect traditional, non-contingent
employment with decent salaries. It is therefore puzzling why, given the
worsening working conditions of online gig work (Hill 2015; Schor and
Attwood-Charles 2017; Slee 2016), professionals would join online labour
platforms and risk precarity. It is also not yet certain what consequences
this risk brings to these professionals. Without a focused examination of
professions involved in on-demand online service provision, researchers risk
developing theories about the gig economy that are of limited scope.
This article takes an initial step toward understanding the legal profession
in the online gig economy. Using interview data fromlawyers who work on one
of China’smost successful online legal service platforms, it attempts to present
a general picture of an emerging digital legal market with a focus on lawyers’
motivationsfor participation and the work outcomes forparticipating lawyers.
This article connects research on online gig work and sociological theories
on the legal profession in order to answer the following empirical questions:
(1) Who are the lawyers in the online gig economy and why do they
participate? (2) How do online legal services compare to traditional legal
services? and (3) How has the emergence of online legal services changed
the professional autonomy and professional status of the participating
lawyers?
I argue that the general features shared by online labour platforms
(e.g. convenience and low cost for customers, the importance of customer
ratings, intense platform control) bring many profession-specific employment
outcomes for lawyers, such as lower professional autonomy and professional
status. For instance, the low cost of online services attracts clients of
lower socio-economic status who cannot aord or access lawyers through
traditional methods. The lower client status is associated with lower intra-
professional status for lawyers according to Heinz and Laumann’s (1982)
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2019 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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