We see high-powered legal teams now becoming business advisers too- with the aid of AI, scouring legal and commercial data, analysing market trends to anticipate changes. They are in best position to advise beyond legal to help identify opportunities and risks that tomorrow holds. They are the fence at the edge of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom. 

Transformation is coming to the legal department of every business and organisation. Expectations are getting higher and if you don’t deliver you will stay behind. There are numerous ways how a legal team can become successful value creators. We see high-powered legal teams now becoming business advisers too: with the aid of AI, scouring legal and commercial data, analysing market trends to anticipate changes, working in synergy with HR, regulatory, technology & commercial – they are in best position to advise beyond legal to help identify opportunities and risks that tomorrow holds. They are the fence at the edge of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom. Although this is the ideal kind of legal department any business can have but it takes a lot to deliver this kind of advanced service. Then, is there something that the majority can do to scale up their legal service? What and how to execute deals to attain maximum efficiency? 

My first in-house legal counsel job was for a telecommunication company. Now as much as I could I did put in hard work and effort, but I felt there was something lacking while churning out Contracts. I realized that I did not fully grasp the business nuances present in the Contracts or the business terminology used. Upon asking I was told I need not delve into that and my job was to cover the legal aspects and protect the Company from any lurking risks. Even though this is true to a certain extent but I was still getting frustrated reading alien language. Finally, after two months of trying on my own, I requested my colleague in the business development department to take out time to explain the business model of the Company to me. I had also tried to read and do my research, so when he explained everything fell into place. I could draft much better Contracts and took lead in negotiation only six months into my job. 

Recently, I met a colleague who started working at a Tech company as its General Counsel but did not fully comprehend the tech side of the Company. I saw him struggling through drafting due to this and advised him to take out time and understand the tech side from one of the team members who knew it well. As expected, the results were positive. 

But if we think about it – is there something further that an in-house counsel can do to add value to their Organization. 

We know that the pandemic initiated a big macro economic shift. With every organization feeling the crunch it is all the more imperative for General Counsels to think about what value do they have to deliver? 

It’s a long standing question that seems simple, but isn’t. 

Usually, the legal functions are taken as secondary activities, which simply means they are not involved in the primary production of revenue for the business. 

We know that risk reduction is one of the main legal functions. But what if we can be proactive and help with businesses in other ways too – like from maximising revenue from a deal by changing the structure by getting deals done earlier and improving cash flow from exploiting IP more effectively, etc. 

Now, what do you think are the kind of main barriers to achieving that and what are the skills that are needed by the legal department to achieve that? 

Time and space is the number one barrier and when I asked this question from a senior lawyer, and whether this could be put into practice the answer I got was ‘I just don’t have time’. 

But if the legal team works more broadly across the business the results can be phenomenal, I have no doubt about that. 

As stated earlier this type of set up does exist, but how can more of us follow it to add more value. Imagine if the GC could have a better insight to distill everything to see what has worked and what has not worked into a very practical model to help them achieve this kind of value for the organisation it will help the business immensely. 

If I have to lay down steps to make better legal teams I would lay down the following: 

1. General Counsels need to be plugged into the strategy of the organisation. So the legal strategy has to reflect the organisational strategy and so if lawyers can have time to really understand what their clients want, only then can they think about how best to deliver. 

2. Enhancing skills of people – and not just legal skills, but the broader leadership commercial skills that a modern legal department needs. 

3. And finally optimising processes using intelligence technology, capturing data about what’s going on, partly to demonstrate to the organisation the value they’re already delivering. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to demonstrate, but also to spot commercial opportunities that can be detected. What’s happening in the business? What can we see in market trends? 

Nowadays data plays a huge role in any business, especially in making more informed decisions about what to do next. 

I think with a myriad of AI tools we can leverage their capabilities to improve our service and also inculcate certain pertinent skills to become not just valuable but indispensable. 

We have developed a course to train your legal team to become of great value to your Organisation. Grab this opportunity to become the linchpin of your Organisation. This small effort will make you value creators. 

Change your perception! 

Change your practice! 

Change your pedestal!