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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on July 29, 2009
Journal of Economic Geography 2009 9(5):641-661; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbp038
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The financialization of large law firms: situated discourses and practices of reorganization

James R. Faulconbridge* and Daniel Muzio**

*Department of Geography, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK. email <j.faulconbridge{at}lancaster.ac.uk>
**Leeds University Business School, Maurice Keyworth Building, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

JEL classifications: K00, G01, J44, L22, L84, M52

This article uses the case of the financialization of large law firms to develop debates about the process of the ‘capitalisation of everything’ whereby financial logics spread both geographically between countries and sectorally from one industry to another. Drawing on work that analyses how discourses of shareholder value have led to the re-organization of firms, the article argues that large law firms have undergone ‘surgery’ as part of attempts to make them appear more and more profitable when assessed using the metric profits per equity partner. The influence of geographical context—English regulation and institutions relating to the legal profession—on ‘surgery’ in the period 1993–2008 are also outlined as part of a situated analysis of the way regulations and institutions together prevent or enable the reproduction of financialized practices in different industries and places through the creation of conjunctural moments that help financial logics gain legitimacy.

Keywords: Financialization, professional services firms, law, profit per equity partner
Date submitted: 18 December 2008     Date accepted: 2 July 2009


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