Table Of Contents
At InView’s General Counsel Summit in late 2024, top General Counsel and heads of legal gathered to discuss pressing issues shaping the in-house legal profession. This paper highlights six major trends identified during the Summit that are influencing the current landscape and future of in-house legal teams. It also provides a strategic guide for legal professionals aiming to maximize their impact and solidify their role as vital contributors to their organizations.
The bottom line is clear: in-house legal teams are undergoing profound transformation. Once primarily seen as cost centers focused on compliance and risk management, they are now emerging as key strategic partners contributing to business success. With the rapid advancement of technology, particularly AI and data use, in-house teams face both challenges and opportunities to redefine their purpose and value.
1. The adoption of AI by the wider business is impacting legal teams
Unsurprisingly, AI and its impact on legal right now, was a hot topic.
It was found that businesses' rapid adoption of AI is impacting legal teams in three areas:
Increased pressure to keep up with changing regulations and risks
As AI becomes embedded into core business operations, legal teams are facing the challenge of ensuring new AI-driven initiatives comply with ever-changing regulations and that risks are appropriately managed. The complexity of AI-related legal issues – including intellectual property concerns, data privacy and ethical questions – will only grow, demanding that legal teams stay proactive in supporting business innovation while mitigating legal risks.
Increased volume of work and rising expectations for faster turnaround times
Because AI-enabled business units are processing tasks more efficiently, legal teams are seeing a surge in the speed and complexity of issues requiring their input. At the same time, as other departments realize the efficiency gains AI provides, they will expect legal to keep pace, demanding faster response times and more agile legal support.
Legal teams have the opportunity to secure investment in their own technology infrastructure
As businesses accelerate their digital transformation, the push for legal departments to integrate more advanced legal tech solutions is intensifying, providing the opportunity for legal teams to gain approval for the investments needed to modernize their operations. These technologies will improve internal efficiency and allow legal departments to deliver faster, more precise legal services – critical in an environment where real-time data and automation are increasingly powering business decisions.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
2. Legal team composition, skill sets and roles are changing
Changes in technology, business complexity and velocity, regulatory changes, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives, and growing expectations to behave like other data-driven business units, are all reshaping the legal team’s skill sets, how legal teams are structured and how legal leaders spend their time.
Data literacy has become a critical core skill for in-house lawyers
Data literacy becoming an essential skill set is one of the biggest changes facing in-house legal teams. With modern-day businesses increasingly data driven, the expectation that legal teams will operate in the same data-focused way has been created. The streamlining and automating of the legal function’s processes makes legal data more meaningful and interconnected with other business data such as finance, sales and risk management.
Being data literate helps lawyers to be proactive, empowering and enabling them to be more proficient in extracting and interpreting data. Able to provide data-driven insights that identify trends, mitigate risks and drive outcomes that add more value to the organization, in-house teams are no longer regarded solely as legal experts but as an essential business function.
Access to data has empowered the team. We’ve been able to identify portfolios that are somewhat aligned, and team members are now focusing on particular ones: it’s a data-informed allocation of matters. It’s helping the team feel less overloaded because they know where their focus needs to be.
New career paths
Not only are skill sets expanding, but the composition of legal departments is too, including non-traditional non-legal roles. The legal team is becoming a multidisciplinary group that includes not only lawyers but also data analysts, legal project managers, operational experts, and other non-legal specialists. This shift is creating new career paths within legal teams, and offers new disciplines a seat at the legal leadership table. As legal departments draw from a broader talent pool, integrating experts who can complement traditional legal skills, they can look forward to fresh perspectives and specialized expertise.
The changing role of the legal leader
The traditional in-house leadership role of General Counsel is being redefined. Business leaders now place greater emphasis on optimizing operational effectiveness rather than relying solely on subject matter expertise, meaning that legal leaders are now regarded as businesspeople with legal skills. To meet the expectations of businesses, legal leaders must adopt a more dynamic and flexible approach to legal team management than they have done historically.
Legal functions need to be led by professionals who are adept in the law and also fluent in finance, technology and data analytics – competencies that can improve processes, balance risk, and integrate new technologies that enhance the business value of legal services. New roles like Chief Legal Operations Officer, Chief Legal Technology Officer and Chief Legal Data Officer are integral to ensuring that legal departments’ strategies align with broader business goals, driving revenue, reducing risk and delivering value.
The convergence of legal, tech and data disciplines, driven by AI and regulatory pressures, is creating a new breed of professional, the ‘legal geek’ who has a unique blend of legal expertise, tech knowledge and business acumen – offering new opportunities and fostering greater diversity and balance in this developing industry.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
3. Client experience is at the heart of how in-house legal services are delivered
Legal departments are increasingly judged by their service delivery rather than their legal advice.
As business growth accelerates, risk management and substantive legal knowledge is becoming less important than the client experience. Legal teams are no longer measured solely by their legal expertise or advice but by how well they deliver services to their internal and external clients.
Businesses expect ease of access and streamlined processes, requiring legal teams to use business-integrated technology to make legal services more efficient, intuitive, and responsive to the needs of the business.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
4. Legal functions have a strategic purpose, providing a competitive advantage
In-house legal teams have more of a strategic purpose and can be a competitive advantage to the business as a result of two key forces.
Expectations are expanding
Organizations are increasingly expecting their legal teams to contribute to ESG, cybersecurity, and corporate strategy. These additional roles are making legal teams more embedded and deeply integrated in the organization, leading to the recognition that legal is not just a compliance function but a strategic asset that can proactively help the organization to navigate complexity, drive innovation and create business resilience.
Technology is enabling strategic focus
With the advancement in legal technology automating low-complexity operational tasks, legal is able to spend more time focusing on high-value, strategic work. Technology is also providing the data and reporting necessary for real-time decision making, better prioritisation of critical work, and improved alignment of legal strategy with broader organization objectives.In addition to improved focus on strategic work, technology is also enabling the accelerated delivery of legal work and therefore driving improved velocity of business outcomes.
Legal positioned as a competitive advantage
The above changes in expectations and technology have created not just a more strategic legal function, but also provided the business with a competitive advantage.
A well-integrated legal function that is accelerating deal making, optimizing contracts and creating a proactive regulatory foundation gives the organization an edge over its competitors. Ensuring the organization can adapt to regulatory changes ahead of their peers, minimizes disruption and turns compliance into a market differentiator. In industries with complex regulations, organizations that have proactive legal strategies are able to expand faster and avoid costly compliance setbacks. Proactive risk mitigation is also becoming a competitive advantage, with organizations demonstrating strong governance in areas like ESG and cybersecurity earning greater trust from investors, customers and regulators. Instead of being seen as a cost centre, legal is showing that it can be a competitive advantage.
Ultimately, this transformation means the redefinition of the legal team’s role – no longer just a support function but a valued and strategic driver of business success.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
5. Legal teams are measured by the value they generate
Businesses require their legal departments to demonstrate value beyond spend management, measuring it with KPIs that evaluate their contribution to risk management and revenue generation. For instance, avoiding litigation or proactively addressing regulatory challenges have become critical metrics of success. Additionally, legal teams will be pivotal in accelerating revenue generation – more accepting of calculated risks and streamlining processes such as contract delivery to enable faster business operations.
Advanced technologies are playing a significant role in this transformation. Modern legal technology, such as legal workspaces and AI, enables legal teams to access data that demonstrates their performance instantly. Rather than requiring manual searches or extensive data entry, technology proactively delivers real-time insights into a new set of success metrics.
This ability to measure and demonstrate value is also reshaping how legal departments secure resources. Legal leaders are able to make compelling cases for increased investment in technology, talent and operational capacity. A better view into the return on investment in the legal team is ensuring that legal departments are equipped to meet the demands of the ever-evolving business landscape.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
6. Legal teams scale through innovation and technology rather than team growth or outsourcing
As business growth increases workloads for in-house legal teams, there is a heightened expectation for issues to be resolved more quickly and efficiently. The age-old approach of employing more lawyers or outsourcing work to external legal providers is no longer appropriate. Instead, in-house teams must meet the demand by utilizing innovation and technology.
Risk-based approach
Legal departments are no longer functioning as the one-stop shop for all things legal. Instead, they are adopting a risk-based approach, prioritizing resources and expertise toward matters that carry the greatest potential impact or likelihood of occurrence, aligned with the business’s overall risk tolerance.
Low-risk work will be removed and seamlessly integrated into business processes. This transition allows legal teams to concentrate on higher-value, strategic work, risk management, business solutions and value-added services.
Automation and self-service tools
The volume of remaining work, such as contract creation, approval workflows and document management, is reduced by using automation and self-service tools. This change streamlines operations and ensures consistency and compliance across the organization. Legal teams are the beneficiaries of efficiency gains, they are able to do more with less, and without hiring additional staff in response to growing workloads.
New technology enables teams to scale, allowing them to complete tasks faster and with more accuracy, and flagging potential issues before they escalate. At a more advanced level, predictive analytics allows legal teams to identify when new agreements are needed, assess risk tolerance, and create contract terms based on historical data and performance.
Recommendations for legal leaders:
Conclusion
Overall, the findings determine that the transformation of in-house legal teams is underway. It is imperative that in-house legal be fast-moving and flexible functions which have the ability to bring their expertise to the executive table – strategic business partners able to accelerate their organization’s desired outcomes. They must be as data-literate as they are proactive, dynamic and client-centric.
Understanding the above trends and adopting the recommendations will position legal functions as indispensable strategic partners able to provide their businesses with a competitive edge, enabling them to manage risks and deliver stronger business outcomes. By leveraging technology, expanding skill sets and keeping client needs at the forefront, legal teams are redefining their role from support functions to essential drivers of business success.
Questions for in-house legal leaders this year:
- Is my team ready to adopt AI and other legal technologies to improve their velocity?
- Is my plan/budget appropriate for the roles and professional development needs of the department?
- Do I know what matters to the business and therefore what my team should prioritize?
- Do I or my team need to upskill in areas such as AI capabilities, regulations and risk areas, or data literacy?
Community discussion
Watch as legal leaders Shaun Plant, Chief Legal Evangelist at LawVu, and Vera Corbett, General Counsel at NGM Group, discuss key insights from the report.
