The Diffusion of Legal Innovations

Abstract

The diffusion of legal innovations (understood as disseminating new practices regarding the law) remains an intriguing phenomenon. Despite growing attention, there is still no integrated framework to represent how some legal innovations experience wide adoption while others fail. This chapter aims to provide the state of the art about the diffusion of legal innovation. It presents existing knowledge about the diffusion of legal innovation by relying on the theories of innovation diffusion and translates them to the field of legal innovation. In doing so, the author pays specific attention to two features: the paradox of diffusion and the turbulent journey proposition. The paradox of diffusion is that unlike technological innovations, legal innovations prove hard to protect. However, the chapter shows that firms may have an interest in diffusing weakly appropriable innovations under three cases: when the collective adoption of innovation is favorable to the firm itself, in the presence of increasing returns, or when costly-to-imitate resources exist. The turbulent journey proposition refers to the fact that previous studies have overlooked that the innovation journey is not linear. Legal innovation success relies not only on initial conditions but also on alliances, discursive strategies, and events that occur throughout the process. As a consequence, a slightly different picture of legal innovation emerges. Finally, the chapter discusses the practical implications of the presented model.