New publication in Business History
Research article keywords: Business lawyers || Luxembourg || legal coding || financial history
From local notables to global players: Law firms in a tax haven (Luxembourg, 1960s to 2020s)
https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2024.2428956
Author: Benoît Majerus, Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), University of Luxembourg
Abstract
Luxembourg has become an important financial centre since the 1960s. Lawyers played an important role in coding capital to support Luxembourg’s position as an offshore centre, serving as an intermediary for international financial flows. Luxembourgish lawyers went from being local notables focused on litigation to a key interface between local regulations and global business. The paper uses a case study of Luxembourg to examine the central processes experienced by law firms under globalisation: the appearance of huge law firms, the intensification of competition, and the routinisation and hyper-specialisation of legal work. Instead of assuming that legal norms and practices went through a straightforward internationalisation, the article demonstrates that the transformation of the legal market in Luxembourg occurred through mutual hybridisation and translation.