Abstract
Recent studies have argued that new digital technologies - and in particular artificial intelligence - threaten to disrupt industries offering highly complex, tailored, and knowledge-based services. However, empirical studies of how the infusion of new digital technologies in knowledge-based services may challenge existing institutional arrangements are still lacking. The current study sets out to fill this void by investigating how a highly institutionally embedded and conservative industry - the US legal service industry - changes as new legal-tech firms enter the market. Building on longitudinal archival studies and a framework of institutional change and entrepreneurship, we show how the US legal industry has moved through three phases and levels of change - work processes, organizational transformations, and ecosystems - and how each phase embeds different institutional logics and work. Based on our findings, we provide new insights into how proto-professional firms unwittingly can take on the role of institutional entrepreneurs and kick off a process of unintended institutional change.