Abstract Following the model developed by Michael Burawoy in Bourdieu meets Marxism, the purpose of this paper is to suggest an additional dialogue between the French sociologist and the Soviet jurist Pachukanis. Our intention is to demonstrate that many of the intuitions presented in The Force of Law were actually anticipated by the author of General Theory of Law and Marxism. We argue that these theoretical frameworks are not only complementarity bur also offers fruitful possibilities for empirical investigation in the legal field.