Partridge & Partners is one of a new breed of law firms springing up in major cities with one thing in common: a belief in Slow Law, a movement that is opposed to using any technology invented after 1945 – and hence they use no legal tech at all.
Slow Law doesn’t have a manifesto as such, but its followers believe that the legal world took a wrong turn some decades ago and needs to be brought back to what really matters. They use no internet, there are no computers, and there are no mobile phones. Technology, especially digital technology, is the enemy and must be avoided.
Typewriters are present in the office, but adherents to the movement prefer paper and fountain pen. Messages to clients are hand-delivered and if that’s not possible then couriers are used locally. International clients can simply send a letter and wait for a reply.
They also refuse to use the billable hour – as counting all that time simply gets in the way of being a lawyer. Instead, they charge whatever they feel is appropriate – with fees tending to be at the very upper end of the market when balanced out.
James Partridge, senior partner at the London firm, told this site: ‘We are one of about a dozen small, but growing firms, which have decided enough is enough with all this talk of efficiency, AI and automation, and anything else that detracts from our core purpose of being lawyers.’
He explained that nearly all of the lawyers in the firm are from leading players in London, such as Slaughter and May, Freshfields and Linklaters, or top US firms in the City such as Sullivan & Cromwell, and that although they have very low leverage of one equity partner to one associate – and without any euphemistically named ‘salaried partners’ – they are growing at a healthy rate.
At this point Artificial Lawyer asked what the clients thought. Surely in 2025 an inhouse lawyer didn’t want to work with a firm with pre-World War II technology, and that relied on paper and pen to write contracts?
‘In fact, our clients love it,’ Partridge noted. ‘Clearly, it’s not for everyone. Some inhouse teams are in a real rush, they live via email and other new-fangled things, but those who value our approach are actually quite large in number.’
‘You’d be surprised how many General Counsel appreciate our way of doing things. It can take a month for us to return even a simple contract, yet they can see the quality of the work, they can feel the dedication to detail. I think they also quite like some of our lawyers’ handwriting,’ he added.
And working with other law firms? How can you work on a major deal when the opposing firm may be swimming in genAI and automation and every other technology one can think of? How do you cope with something as essential as emailed questions during a negotiation, for example?
‘That’s very simple,’ Partridge observed, ‘we simply refuse to work on any deal where the opposite counsel demands we use digital technology. Instead, we recommend to the client other firms that work according to the Slow Law ethos – many of which can provide some of the best lawyers in the country in their particular niche area.’
On the global aspect, Partridge said that there are now Slow Law firms in New York, Chicago, Sydney, and several in Paris – although in the latter case it was by default and they had not intentionally joined the movement.
Partridge added that it was only natural that this should happen. In previous eras, when faced by overwhelming changes to society driven by technology, those who could rebelled against it and embraced ‘the old ways’.
‘Look at the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era, for example. It was a time of unprecedented technological change, but from within that cauldron came the Arts & Crafts movement – an artistic and cultural development that eschewed mass production and embraced a more Medieval approach to design and manufacture,’ he observed.
‘Meanwhile, look at how today many families wish to escape the big city to live in rural tranquillity. It’s all a natural reaction. And as long as there are clients that like what we do, we shall keep doing it. In fact, from what we see and hear, it’s a rapidly growing movement,’ Partridge concluded.
So, there you go. It looks like this was perhaps an inevitable reaction to legal tech, but it would also appear that Slow Law is the exception that proves the broader rule that most law firms are embracing tech and placing it at the heart of their business.
Artificial Lawyer wishes the Slow Law movement well, albeit that they probably won’t be engaging much with legal tech anytime this century!
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In other news:
The UK’s Ministry of Justice is to scrap the use of ‘Guilty’ verdicts in criminal trials as ‘it may offend criminals and no-one must ever be offended by anything’. Instead, court outcomes will result in either ‘Not Guilty’, or ‘Not Guilty’. A spokesperson for the MoJ said: ‘This progressive move both ensures no-one is ever upset and also reduces the cost of running the prison service, as there will no longer be any criminals, or ‘justice customers’, as we prefer to call them.’
Clifford Chance has found a solution to the WFH challenge by converting three empty floors in its London office into micro-apartments, each five meters square in size, allowing several hundred associates to both ‘work from home’ and be in the office at the same time.
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NOTE: Obviously, as you have all noticed by now, this is an April Fool’s story, as it’s April 1st. Hope you enjoyed it.