Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

personnel or hours worked. We deal with this limitation by including a number of control
variables and employing a dynamic panel data estimator. Future research may see more
information available on the identities of such outside law firms permitting a closer matching
of internal and external personnel and hours.
A third limitation relates to sampling and generalizability. We think our framework
and evidence can be generalized to other large, established firms in the US, the UK and to
other such firms domiciled elsewhere but with substantial business and or secondary share
listings in the US or UK. But this leaves many other firm types where we are reluctant to
generalize and advise additional study on make and buy strategies. The discount consumer
services purchasing giant, Groupon, was founded in 2008, but did not have a full-time inhouse
counsel until 2011 when it already operated in 48 countries generating $1.6 billion in
annual revenue 7 . Groupon’s history suggests that explanation of plural sourcing strategies for
legal services in entrepreneurial firms may require quite different framework assumptions
and empirical methods to account for confounding effects related to organizational newness
and management professionalization.
Conclusion
We began this study by asking how firms develop plural sourcing strategies important
to their survival and success. We end it with a call for strategy researchers to continue
developing plural sourcing frameworks and evidence relevant to different organizational
forms and different product and service producing activities. We chose legal services and
demonstrated how such frameworks and evidence could help us understand the relative size
of in-house legal departments, an exercise quite different from what Shakespeare’s character,
7 ABA Journal. 2011. The new normal: Make or buy in the age of the free-agent lawyer. ABA Journal.com.
October 26. Available electronically at: http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/inhouse_lawyers_make_or_buy/
32