5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This session examines the changes in legal work in the face of the issues raised by the finiteness of our ecosystem and by technological developments, in particular digitisation and the rise of AI, which is now generative. Papers will cover the different professions and worlds of law (magistrates, lawyers, sollicitors, barristers, notaries and public notaries, in-house lawyers, court clerks, bailiffs, clerks and assistants, etc.). They will focus in particular on the challenges facing these workers today (assistance but also competition from tools such as AI, ecological issues, employees' new relationship with work in the post-Covid period, changes in the organisation of work and working methods with, in particular, the rise of teleworking, social and ecological responsibilities, the social responsibility of companies and their employees, equality between men and women, etc.). It will also look at changes in the activities and missions of companies (for example, the rise of mediation and arbitration, changes in the law, the rise of soft law, etc.) The technical dimension of daily work activities will be taken seriously and considered from an empirical perspective, describing these work activities and aiming to understand contemporary changes.