Future of professional work: evidence from legal jobs in Britain and the United States

Abstract

Abstract What is the impact of digital technology on professional work? This paper addresses this question by developing a theory on professional jurisdictional control, which we define as a profession’s power to maintain or shift from existing jurisdictional settlements in the face of external disturbances. Digital technology is a disturbance, and who ends up undertaking digital tasks depends on the nature of professional jurisdictional control. With protective jurisdictional control, the profession engages in full or subordinate jurisdiction, delegating new tasks to subordinate semiprofessionals. By contrast, with connective jurisdictional control, the profession prefers settlements by division of labor or advisory links, enabling equal-status professions to work together. Using a large and representative database of online job postings, we find evidence for this hypothesis. Empirically, we deploy three ways to gauge the nature of professional jurisdictional control: first, by comparing traditional law firms and alternative business structure firms in the UK; second, by contrasting the US (with protective jurisdictional control) and the UK; and third, by examining the legal sector (in which the legal profession dominates) and non-legal sectors. We also find that protective (connective) jurisdictional control is associated with lower (higher) pay premia for digital skills, consistent with theory. Our findings highlight the mediating role of professional jurisdictional control to inform the future of work debate.