This article is devoted to Weber’s concepts of the formal rationality and the material rationality of law. In particular, the opening paragraphs reconstruct Weber’s analysis of the process of legal rationalisation and its two directions (formal and material). The fourth and fifth paragraphs are then devoted to examining the relations that, according to Weber, exist between economics and law (especially between capitalism and law in the West). In the last paragraph, the author cites Weber’s critiques of the free law movements (Ehrlich, Kantorowicz). According to Weber, technical and economic development will consolidate the primacy of the legislator, such that juridical rationalisation will be primarily formal in nature. All excessive hopes of any “materialisation” of law will thus founder and, with them, above all the aspirations of academically trained lawyers to safeguard their dignity as a class vis-à-vis the rise of legislative law.