Professor Bird’s latest book, Legal Knowledge in Organizations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage, stands out as a rare opus of profound erudition. While there are other similar books on the market, none match the completeness and ambition of Bird’s latest opus. Building upon his previous research, this book condenses over 20 years of study into the critical yet often overlooked intersection of law and business. This niche subject, primarily developed by law professors teaching at business schools, is known by various names, such as legal strategy, business law and strategy, the legal environment of business, proactive law, law and management, among others. The goal of this approach is to educate business leaders and decision makers within organisations to strategically manage and leverage legal knowledge as a source of competitive advantage, as well as to train legal professionals capable of assisting them.

The target audiences for this work include legal scholars involved in business education, managers seeking to obtain a competitive edge through legal strategy, and compliance and other in-house professionals navigating complex regulatory landscapes. A key message and the leitmotiv of the book is that law can be leveraged as a source of competitive advantage for organisations. To achieve this end, decision makers within organisations should not only acquire and apply relevant legal knowledge but also adopt certain attitudes towards it.

Written in plain English to facilitate understanding by non-legal experts, the book includes useful visuals such as tables and figures to summarise information and convey powerful visual messages. Legal scholars involved in business education will undoubtedly welcome this work. With a grand total of 1,280 citations, this book may become the de facto Bible of the discipline, a treasure trove for scholars and researchers interested in the intersection of law and management. The book covers all the key topics discussed in the last 20 years of this emerging discipline, including foundational works and contributions from the most reputable authors, both from the US and elsewhere.

The book spans over 260 pages and is divided into 10 chapters. Chapter 1, “Introduction”, defines and establishes the importance of “legal knowledge” in organisations and provides a blueprint for the upcoming chapters. The next two chapters provide a theoretical and interdisciplinary perspective on legal knowledge. Chapter 2, “Legal Knowledge in Organizations”, explores the potential of legal knowledge to become a valuable resource within organisations. It suggests how legal knowledge, coupled with business strategy, can create synergies to better achieve organisational goals. From a resource-based view of the firm, legal knowledge meets four criteria: value, rarity, imperfect imitability and the absence of equivalent substitutes, which altogether have the potential to make legal knowledge a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Chapter 3, “Factors That Influence Legal Knowledge Acquisition”, completes the theoretical foundation of legal knowledge, adding two additional categories of variables: attitudinal and attributive. This chapter highlights that organisational citizenship, the perceived legitimacy of legal rules in the company and perceptions of lawyers and the legal process can all influence how an organisation interprets legal knowledge. Furthermore, the presence of a lawyer-CEO, the influence of legal experts and the regulatory intensity of the market are also relevant for building capabilities to use legal knowledge. The more these traits can be cultivated, the more effective the company can be in leveraging legal knowledge within organisations.

Chapter 4, “Legal Knowledge in Competitive Environments: Avoidance, Compliance, and Prevention Pathways”, discusses the first three of the five pathways of legal strategy. The author defines pathways as a “bundle of attitudes and processes that are interrelated over time” (p. 57); a pathway of legal strategy “apply those attitudes and processes to legal challenges and opportunities facing the organization” (p. 57). Bird had introduced the idea of pathways of legal strategy in earlier work, which are further developed and expanded in the book. The first pathway is Avoidance, “to circumvent legal obligations for the benefit of the company” (p. 59). The second one is Conformance, “to ensure that the organisation has fully adhered to its requisite legal obligations” (p. 70). The third one is Prevention, “the practice of averting legal mishaps before they actually arise in the organization” (p. 77).

Chapter 5, “Legal Knowledge in Competitive Environments: Value and Transformation Pathways”, completes the presentation of the five pathways. The Value pathway consists of “the deployment of legal knowledge that generates retained benefit to the organisation” (p. 88). The last pathway is Transformation, a “firm pursuing the transformation pathway uses its legal knowledge to redefine the legal or organisational environment in which the firm operates” (pp. 101–02). Unlike the first three pathways, which are primarily defensive, the last two aim to obtain advantages. Both chapters explain at length the elements required for the successful implementation of each pathway and illustrate them with examples. However, not all pathways are created equal. The author seems to prefer the last two (Value and Transformation) due to their potential for value creation, thus providing more benefits for organisations. However, the author also recognises the dynamic nature of pathways and the need for companies to adjust or modify legal pathways along the way to respond to exogenous variables. The author makes sure to distinguish each pathway.

Chapter 6, “Applications of Legal Knowledge: Case Studies and Optimal Utilization”, provides three case studies illustrating the application of all five pathways. The chosen case studies, namely, eliminating workplace sexual harassment, protecting intellectual property rights and enforcing anti-corruption laws, are not only relevant due to the significant threat they pose to the survival of any organisation, but also due to their universal appeal. Laws differ from country to country. Even within countries that belong to the same “family” or “tradition”, employment, intellectual property and anti-corruption rules and standards differ. However, a virtue of legal strategy is that it does not focus on a legal field or particular jurisdiction. Legal Strategy, even if it comes from the US, is not about US law. It is an approach that can be applied to any legal field in any jurisdiction. In a similar fashion to what Comparative Law attempted more than a hundred years ago, legal strategy appeals to a global scholarship. For the same reason, changes in positive law do not weaken the approach; to the contrary, they underscore its adaptability.

The next two chapters introduce VUCA variables to legal strategy and it could not have been more opportune. VUCA is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, whose creation is attributed to the US military to face post-Cold War geopolitical disruptions. Bird’s forethought and timing are remarkable. However, he is not a guru – his ideas are far from being products of luck or providence. Rather, they are the offspring of his intellectual curiosity, scientific rigour and proactive mindset. He began his research on the effects of VUCA on the legal environment of business before the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. Bird suggests including a VUCA perspective to Strategic Legal Risk Management. Global business leaders can find in Bird’s work guidance to navigate the current VUCA scenario, which has seemingly become the “new normal”. Chapter 7, “Strategic Legal Risk Management: Managing Volatility and Uncertainty”, focuses on the first two dimensions, while Chapter 8, “Strategic Legal Risk Management – Managing Complexity and Ambiguity”, focuses on the remaining two.

Chapter 9, “Leveraging Contractual Knowledge to Create and Preserve Value”, is devoted to the contract, arguably the most malleable legal device for organisations. Bird does not see contracts as a mere legal document to be signed and then kept in a drawer, but rather as a “living” governance mechanism that can prevent problems from arising, whose final aim is to achieve organisational goals. Bird builds upon and enhances Ian Macneil’s Relational Contract Theory, as well as Proactive Contracting Theory. Thus, the contract is seen as a coordination instrument, encouraging dialogue and information exchange between parties, for the creation of joint value. Thus, when there is trust among the parties, the contract is a source of co-created collaborative advantage. And even in the absence of trust, contractual knowledge can be leveraged to deploy deterrent mechanisms to keep parties honest and discourage destabilising behaviour, such as opportunism (hold-up) and defection.

Chapter 10, “Building an Ethical Culture of Legal Knowledge”, provides the crucial missing piece in Bird’s comprehensive theoretical construction. All five pathways can potentially be abused. Therefore, as the author acknowledges, “[l]egal knowledge needs an ethical compass” (p. 223). We may see here the influence of Bird’s enduring belief in justice, shaped by his early Jesuit education and cultivated throughout his life, as he mentions in the preface of this book (p. xix). To use legal knowledge responsibly, organisations must take the ethical high ground. Law and ethics, both normative disciplines, must complement each other. True to his pragmatic and hands-on approach demonstrated throughout the book, Bird offers two examples of Ethical Cultures. One from public international law, the United Nations Global Compact and the Business for the Rule of Law Framework, another from private law, the Proactive Law Movement. Proactive Law is, according to Bird, a “doctrinal sibling” (p. 235) of legal strategy. Proactive Law was born in Europe in the 1990s and is considered the brainchild of Helena Haapio. Proactive Law has two dimensions, preventative (legal risk management) and promotive (using the law as a source of competitive advantage). Proactive Law’s holistic approach is built upon an ethical framework. In the legal area, most scholars tend to focus only on what Natalino Irti called geo-law, namely the positive law applicable in their jurisdictions, neglecting and being unaware of what happens elsewhere. Contrarily, Bird acknowledges and welcomes insights originating in other countries and distant jurisdictions. This is yet another praiseworthy aspect of Bird’s work, building a bridge for scholarly dialogue across the Atlantic.

To conclude, Bird’s latest book speaks to a universal audience interested in leveraging legal knowledge as a source of competitive advantage for organisations, while providing an ethical framework. Professor Bird has authored a seminal work that will shape the future of legal strategy and business education.