The creeping adoption of AI and gradual encroachment of PE represent potentially far-reaching challenges to established leadership in the legal sector. Andrew Hill's article asked: is it time for law firms to recruit their senior leaders from outside the law? 

The professionalisation of law firm management is a long-established trend, with outside business services leaders taking on increasingly significant roles. See Chapter 8 of my book "Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas" for my research into the challenges and opportunities for management professionals in this context.

Yet, while law firms occasionally experiment with appointing non-lawyer CEOs, they have a long-established pattern of "organ rejection."

Therefore, in this article I argue against the "breathless rhetoric around change" concerning the adoption of AI and the influx of private equity, and present a more nuanced argument. 

Lawyers will continue to lead the firms they own, and will continue to reach out to "non-lawyers" for external input. As I explain, "By the time you get to the top of these organisations, you’ve already been running a substantial and complex business. The people who rise to the top realise what they don’t know", and increasingly know who and where to turn to in order to fill the gaps in their leadership capability.

I emphasise that the big challenge for law firm management is that "they will all copy each other, but (still) aren’t very good at learning from other sectors." And, to the institutional theorists reading this article, yes I really did use the term "institutional isomorphism" in the Financial Times.