Profession Service Operations: the case for Service Modularity with a Legal Partnership

The purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of ‘service modularity’ through the legal profession. There is a developing consensus that professional work is changing in the socio-economic and political climates in which service professionals operate (Harvey 1990, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to trace the value-add through the legal profession and examine how service modularity can be applied within a legal practice in order to create a theoretical framework for service modularity. The paper contributes to diversity of service modularity within eight UK legal service disciplines from the perspective of facilitating the knowing-doing gap, bridging the gap within the Von Nordenflycht (2010) taxonomy of professional services as characterized as high knowledge intensity, with low capital intensity.