Learning to be a lawyer in transnational law firms: communities of ...

Learning to be a lawyer in transnational law firms: communities of practice,
institutions and identity regulation
Abstract
This paper examines the way English transnational law firms use communities of practice to
connect together, as ‘islands of expertise’, offices in different European countries. Through
analysis of original empirical material collected through interviews the paper shows how firms
use communities of practice to not only transfer home-country best practices to European offices
but also to manage the geographically heterogeneous affects of institutional contexts on the
attitudes and values of lawyers – what we refer to as lawyers’ geographically heterogeneous
identities. As such the contribution of the paper is twofold. First the paper highlights the
important ‘identity regulation’ role of communities of practice that coexists and contributes to
the wider organizational learning role focussed upon in existing studies. Second the paper shows
how transnational corporations use communities of practice as part of their ‘institutional
entrepreneurship’ strategies which seek to minimise the effect of nationally variable institutional
contexts on overseas activities.
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