Category: Features

A two thirds majority consider budgetary constraints as the main challenge to implementing legal technology. However, when digging into additional responses by GCs that answered ‘No’, a more detailed picture emerges, especially as it relates to budgetary constraints and broader corporate culture, the importance of in-house legal teams in the eyes of corporate leadership, and difficulties in communicating the importance of legal tech in response to changing pressures and workloads on in-house legal teams.

Many respondents expressed, as previously mentioned, a feeling that they were caught in the paradox of choice. With, at some times, substantial upfront costs and long-term investment, as one GC noted, ‘tech implementations are complicated and require a lot of support and time to make it successful.’ Other respondents expressed frustration that there was ‘no time and expertise to dive into the topic and set up a project – we’re still operating under the attitude that old solutions will solve everything into looking into new processes first.’

When faced with too many options and too high a cost to implement, some may avoid implementing legal tech until the market becomes consolidated. Some even expressed ignorance of where things currently stood. One GC even said their biggest obstacle was their general lack of knowledge about the available tools at their disposal. For many lawyers, legal tech can feel overwhelming, especially for older GCs that are often disparaged online as the ‘how do I open pdf?’ generation. But legal tech continues to advance at a rapid pace, and even younger generations of lawyers know the experience of stepping away from software for a short period of time to return to an updated UI that looks entirely alien to them.

Other respondents noted a ‘resistance to change on the part of employees’, corporate ‘culture’, or ‘inertia’ in ways of thinking. This conservative attitude towards change may be due to any number of factors, including the adage, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, expressed in one response that noted they were operating in a culture that was fixed in ‘the old way of doing things’. This, however, is diametrically opposed to the fact that changes in the amount and extensions of the type of work done by in-house counsel practically demand they have access to the best available tools to properly do their job. This failure to secure ‘organisational buy-in’ was by far the second highest stumbling block to in-house counsel securing funding to access new legal tech.

Another GC expressed this difficulty in demonstrating the importance of adopting legal tech as follows: ‘legal tech requires a lot of work to convince others it is worth the cost, while some more traditional costs are accepted more easily by our organisation.’ Similarly, another GC commented, ‘other client-serving lines are more important than our in-house legal department’, while another lamented ‘value of legal tech is not perceived with the financial decision-makers.’ Generally, in these instances, the biggest hurdle was the perception of cost by leadership, especially if a particular programme or application could not be used universally, even if procuring it was desirable.

One GC’s comments provide a synthesis of the other major hurdles facing GCs wishing to implement legal tech: ‘Overall the biggest difficulty is navigating in an IT world where we have little knowledge, little insight and do not speak the same language. It has been critical to find the right partners in IT who can translate our visions into reality. We pride ourselves on being persuaders, but we needed allies to achieve anything.’

A small number note that there were conflicts between in-house IT security measures and the legal tech available to them, with providers not matching their security standards, or noted that ‘contractual relationships’ already in place made it difficult to implement any automation tools or legal tech generally. Others felt that integration of legal tech with existing platforms or systems was the biggest stumbling block to introducing new legal tech into in-house legal teams.

And in rare cases, respondents felt ‘most existing tools are useless’ or felt the ‘mindsets of our in-house lawyers’ prevented them from implementing legal tech. These responses noted that other lawyers on their team felt more secure using ‘paper-based processes’ or could not set down a clear measure on return of investment in new legal tech. In these cases, some GCs pleaded for buy-in on their teams. As one GC said, ‘there is a need for a paradigm shift. Not many people see the benefits of automated legal tech.’

Given companies’ increased interest in legal tech, we have asked our respondents if their companies have clear road maps regarding legal tools.

While the minority, 36%, answered yes, 64% of the respondents affirmed that their corporations do not have a clear plan to adopt the legal tech. As one GC noted, ‘budgetary constraints and other more pressing matters redirect the focus of the team’s attention.’ The main reason behind that seems to primarily a limited budget and small team size; however, increased pressure on legal teams regarding compliance involving sustainability and additional disclosure on ESG also were brought up as limiting the time available for legal teams to construct and adhere to a road map.

There is also a significant number of GC that suggest that even if the time and funding were available, it was simply impracticable for the time being to draft a road map regarding legal technology, mainly because the legal tech space is evolving so fast for that it proved too difficult for the team to establish a medium/long-term plan.

Furthermore, a majority of the respondents state that even though they were interested in implementing legal tech, their companies did not have buy-in regarding the efficiency of legal tech, in part because the corporate side felt the benefits were too hard to measure and they could not see any obvious positive externalities that would be seen outside the legal team.

Pressure to embrace change is also reflected in the relationships between in-house departments and external firms. As can be seen with the breakdown in the responses to this question, a majority (92%) believed either it was very important or somewhat important that external firms were up to date with technology. This result is not unexpected – what is unexpected, however, were the answers given by the 8% that did not believe this was important at all.

A common response within the 8% cohort was that external firms must provide sound advice first, and GCs seem not to be concerned with the methodologies by which the advice is delivered, regardless of tech or more traditional practices. Here we see some crossover in the attitudes of corporate towards in-house legal teams: to an outsider, legal teams remain a black box, even to other legal teams. What matters is only the result, and the belief that the result was arrived by a trustworthy method. So this thinking goes, why bother with any new tools that could increase efficiency for an external firm when the efficiencies are not obviously passed on to those requiring external support?

However, among those that responded that it was very important that external law firms are up-to-date with technology, some of the reasons include the need to provide faster and more efficient service to improve cost performance and more user-friendly documents. Here, a majority of GCs clearly understood the benefits that legal tech provided the profession, either due to personal experience or the desire to implement any tools that would help alleviate the strain on an already-overloaded in-house legal team. Additionally, one respondent made an insightful observation about developments in legal tech: ‘external firms should be the one driving innovation, since many in-house teams lack the budget to embrace more cost-intensive and newer type of legal tech.’

For that 36% that felt it was somewhat important that external firms be up-to-date with legal tech, some seemed a bit warier regarding the rapport between external law firms and legal tech. In fact, between those who selected ‘somewhat important’, even though law firms that implement technology into their process are highly competitive in the market, a few respondents expressed caution. One GC stressed the importance of a strong alignment between the technologies adopted by both the client and the external firm. When this alignment is absent, so they said, this introduced a new variable with potentially unexpected results, making it harder to understand the processes, and extending the length and complexity of the overall service.

In this ever-changing world, technological advancements are in continuous development. The number of devices and legal tech out there is increasing day after day. And yet, a substantial majority of surveyed QCs believe the extensive choice that legal tech offers nowadays pose several challenges when selecting the best tools for in-house counsel. In short, out of all responses to questions that detailed the major stumbling blocks to investing in new legal tech, the primary factor was the overwhelming number of options of legal tech that have swamped the market.

The data should not, however, be understood to exclude other challenges regarding selecting software, which include corporate attitudes towards change, deprioritising the needs of legal counsel compared to the corporate side of business, stinginess when faced with expensive software options, and difficulties in conveying to corporate management that legal tech was necessary in light of increased volume and type of workload.

The majority of the respondents affirm that they select the legal tech provider considering the compatibility with software already in place. In-house lawyers look for tools that are compatible with the internal environment and that are easy to use.

Budget plays once again a pivotal role in selecting legal tech. The most common way to proceed among our respondents is by having a direct experience through free trials and tests. Still, the final choice is given by the costs and efficiency of the products.

An interesting finding is, however, that a high percentage of our respondents rely on word of mouth and peer reviews who have had first-hand experience using the given legal tech. Perhaps, knowing that colleagues are happy with their choices can make GCs more confident when choosing since they can concretely see the added value that a specific tool has brought to other legal departments.

Additionally, some in-house legal teams have created their own tailored criteria to make the best choice. As one general counsel suggests, ‘it must be easy to use and intuitive; it must be compatible with our systems already in place.’ Clearly, when one turns to legal tech searches for a solution that is time-saving and quick to learn, especially when the department in question is a larger team, re-training all the members would probably require some time.

However, a minority of the respondents affirmed that the legal department and general counsel have little say regarding selecting the right legal technology. It seems that the final say goes to the IT department. One GC said, ‘the fact that we do not choose is part of the problem.’ While the IT department is probably more familiar when it comes to technology, legal departments being the ones using certain tools on a daily basis would feel way more comfortable being the one selecting the most suitable to respond to their needs. Perhaps having a standardised process in place when selecting legal tech that considers the opinion of both departments could represent a more viable solution.

While legal technology is now well established, questions arise regarding its regulatory framework. The data clearly suggest that the majority of our respondents do not think that the current legal framework in place is enough to govern legal tech. Their reasoning for what was missing from current regulatory frameworks was wide-ranging, including ethical guidance for all products developed by big tech, including data collection and AI.

Other GCs mentioned that the legal frameworks in some jurisdictions were inadequate or missing entirely. One GC said, ‘in the Philippines, there are limited regulations on legal technology. For comfort of clients, it will be good to have regulations to ensure that legal tech providers are legitimate and compliant with appropriate regulations.’ This concern, while not prevalent in responses, did indicate the major disparities within different legal frameworks. As another GC expressed their concern over the lack of regulation: ‘What current regulatory framework? If you put legal decisions in the hands of business, you reduce oversight and increase moral hazard.’

Another general trend was the feeling that ‘regulation always falls behind’ technology or that ’technology moves faster than any regulatory framework.’ Frequent responses expressed resignation that no matter how responsive to major issues, since regulatory frameworks were designed post hoc, the fact that regulation was always implemented in reaction to problems meant ‘regulatory frameworks are always late, by its very nature.’

However, some respondents felt that in their specific geographic jurisdictions or industries, some regulatory frameworks may be too onerous. For example, one GC said, ‘if anything, regulations in Europe are sometimes excessive and try to reach into technology spaces that the regulators themselves don’t fully understand.’

4% of respondents considered ethics to be a missing issue when it comes to the regulatory framework surrounding legal tech. As one GC said, ‘ethics is behaviour-related, and if the intent is not right, technology may not be able to help’. Unfortunately, a related question concerning whether the respondent’s organisation had a robust ethical policy in place regarding legal tech revealed only 39% of respondents could answer in the affirmative.

Additionally, 15% of surveyed GCs believe that there is a need for more precise and transparent policies in place. Respondents call for a more holistic approach – ‘policies appear to be segmented, whereas the use of technology crosses over all aspects of the business.’ However, the biggest issue concerning QCs seems to be concentrated in the regulatory entities not stepping up to provide universal, clear, and appropriate regulations.

Technology develops much faster than legislation, in the general opinion of the 81% of surveyed GCs who said that a regulatory framework should be formulated at the same speed as technology, catching up and pre-empting new developments. ‘Regulators should adopt policies accepting evidence produced by technology.’ Another GCs adds: ‘regulatory framework is often overengineered and focuses on technicalities, lacking common sense and emotional judgement.’

Automation and digitisation of processes certainly help legal departments in daily mansions allowing them to focus on more time-consuming and demanding tasks. Legal tech is evolving faster, providing solutions to several matters that previously fell under the scope of lawyers. However, it is essential to understand the limits of such trends and what the legal department of the future will look like.

23% of respondents think that the in-house legal departments of the future will definitely have more tech and fewer people. However, in this scenario, GCs seem to believe that there will be a true revolution in the profile of the legal team and the function it will assume within the company. As one respondent suggests, even though the number of people may decrease slightly, there will be the opportunity to operate on a more meticulous selection based on a higher standard to carry out high-quality work. In-house lawyers generally look at this possibility positively, recognising it as an opportunity for lawyers to move up on the value chain, partnering with first-line business teams and providing strategic legal input.

The majority of respondents to this question regarding in-house legal departments of the future believe that legal tech does not mean there will be fewer people in legal departments in response to an increase in reliance on legal tech. A common argument put forward in responses is that ‘automation only eases the pain, but does not necessarily reduce the need for human insight and experience.’

Among GCs surveyed, the human element is considered a key factor that can never be fully removed from in-house counsel, not only because it offers a more creative approach to advice and essential decision-making but also because it allows for building relationships with other departments and business partners, which are crucial in risk management and strategic decision-making process which will enable the business to function and expand. As one GC puts it, ‘my strong belief is that the human factor to the legal professional shall never be replaced by technology.’

A noticeable minority of 20%, however, predicts that the legal department of the future will be a mix between people and tech, with a strong integration between the two. A common pattern in these respondents’ answers is that legal tech and people are not mutually exclusive, but meant to complement each other.

Responses to this question have been varied. Overall, a majority of 86% expect legal tech to bring changes into the legal department of the future. Analysing this data further, we can identify three major categories in the data.

10% of respondents believe legal tech will entirely change the way the legal department operates within the business, touching upon every area: ‘The more you can implement legal tech tools, the more you manage to keep the legal department updated with trends and tasks that the legal department is expected to fulfil. In other words: you need legal tech to keep the legal department competitive in the long run.’

This is contrasted to 7%, who believe that the main change will be reflected in saving costs, while a vocal minority of 3% claim future legal tech will primarily allow establishing clear metrics for KPIs. As one GC puts it: ‘it will allow calculating metrics into the legal analysis, representing a tangible benefit for our internal clients.’

Additionally, the majority of respondents at 66% of all surveyed believe legal tech will positively affect driving efficiency and save time. One of the respondents noted, ‘legal tech will evolve to more suitable and efficient solutions that will manage low risk-high volume repetitive tasks, saving time and resources as well as budget, generating creative and value-added legal work.’

Oddly enough, the remaining 14% did not expect legal tech to bring a noticeable change in the way legal departments operate, especially in the near future. However, given the pace at which legal tech and other major tech tools have developed in even the last two decades and its substantial changes to in-house legal teams currently operate, it’s clear that we’ll soon have a much clearer picture of what the legal department of the future will look like. And unlike this minority of respondents, the majority expect legal tech to help their development every step of the way.

Few would disagree that the global pandemic has led us into a new era. Many call this the ‘new normal’. The term might have been overused, as some media outlets argue, but we cannot dispute that companies around the world are still trying to find their footing with the transformed expectations of their employees, customers, and the societies they contribute to.

The developments that have arisen and which are still arising as the result of the pandemic have prompted corporate legal teams to recognise the need to become significantly more responsive, agile, adaptive, and resilient. In this fast-paced environment, technology has a colossal and indispensable role to play.

Isabel Parker, executive director of the Digital Legal Exchange, warns us, though, that ‘technology is necessary, but it is not enough on its own.’ What she means is that if in-house legal departments intend to become adaptive organisations, they will have to commit to a much more holistic digital transformation.

To conservative and circumspect companies, this may sound like yet another buzzword with little constructive consequences; however, the idea in fact proposes a change in the way companies are structured and the way they work, spanning from their interactions with partners and customers to their relationship with their employees, in order to create a comprehensive digital mindset.

In most cases, the businesses to which in-house lawyers provide support have already embarked on this journey and durably baked digital transformation into their strategies. Isabel Parker observes, ‘there is not a single leading corporation today that has not committed to digital transformation in one way or another.’

Occasionally, however, in-house legal departments struggle to make their voice heard and unfairly carry a reputation of being yet another back-office function whose activities only slow down the business. As a result, when the world’s way of doing business changed, the legal function was often left behind as the last piece of the jigsaw when it came to digitalisation. This was a source of frustration for both sides. But more often than not, businesses have now come to understand and appreciate the far-reaching changes corporate legal teams are undergoing. Although there can still be a disconnection between the two, businesses are now pushing for legal teams to evolve alongside them.

In this evolution lies an excellent opportunity for legal teams to demonstrate their value to the business. However, the disconnection remains as a crucial hurdle. The vast majority, if not almost all, of the general counsels (GCs) report facing challenges in securing a budget for investments in technology. In the light of the current evolution towards digitalisation, this means that despite businesses pushing for the transformation and for a more proactive approach to risks and legal teams’ desire to implement them, there is still a discordance between these aspirations and what is effectively happening on the ground. One way or another, in-house legal departments must find a way to become a different kind of player that works alongside the enterprise to demonstrate tangible value.

Nowadays, GCs openly admit that running a department cost-effectively and coming in under budget is no longer good enough. ‘In-house legal departments provide all sorts of advice to the business side of corporations. As a consequence, GCs need to actively demonstrate this contribution’, says Douwe Groenevelt, Vice President and deputy general counsel at ASML. This is what investment into legal technology needs to achieve.

From a corporate counsel’s point of view, the pressure to start carrying out effective technology policies is also immense. The pace with which the macroeconomic, geopolitical, and regulatory landscape quickly changes and the remits of GCs expand is such that GCs simply do not have the capacity to keep up with the increasing inflow of data without investing in technology.

Isabel Parker explains this bind: ‘I do not know of a corporation that is willing to hire hundreds, maybe thousands of heads to deal with this. Technology is the only way to fight this fire.’

For this purpose, GCs need to have a plan: they must invest in the right type of technology that integrates well with other forms of tech already used across the business. ‘The legal department sees everything, it touches each part of the business and a huge volume of data flows through legal’, explains Parker, ‘so corporate legal teams are very well placed to harness that data and use it to provide insight to drive the business forwards.’

‘It will soon be standard to use technology to spot opportunities for revenue increase, identify which branch of the company has repeated employment investigations or needs to have extensive training on discrimination, detect revenue leakage through specific commercial contract corpus, or track contract renewals’, continues Groenevelt.

These are just a few examples, but what they reveal is that it is this kind of proactive, risk-spotting, risk-preventing, and revenue-generating activities that legal tech need to move towards.

The shift is underway, but it is slow to materialise. The primary reason why this change is so slow for most corporate legal teams, whatever jurisdiction they operate in, is that in most cases, they do not have at hand the benchmarks and data to help them articulate what concrete changes can be implemented.

Although a great deal of legal technology was developed with in-house counsel in mind, there are still very few examples where GCs can clearly identify the specific value expected to be generated if they transition to implementing legal tech.

As a consequence, there is little dependable benchmarking data available – there is no clear North Star guiding GCs towards their goal, reliably directing them towards what they should aim for, technology-wise. This makes it even more challenging for them to create a business case that articulates the costs of investing into legal technology.

One major concern voiced is that introducing new forms of technology is likely to give rise to high expenses during its initial implementation, maintenance, and upkeep. Therefore, in the context of business activity, introducing legal tech needs to demonstrate beforehand that it will generate benefits by improving cost or time efficiency in the medium or long term.

However, in addition to finding the appropriate type of technology set-up, there is a prior ‘people challenge’ that needs to be resolved: how do people relate to and interface with the technology? This question is important because people are always the starting point for implementing any new form of technology. It makes no sense to implement a form of technology that does not help accomplish those goals. As American psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, ‘if the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.’ This problem runs in the other direction as well: if the only tool you have is a hammer, no matter how aware you are of what goal needs to be accomplished, you can’t use a hammer as a hacksaw. In essence, you need both the right people and tools to do the job.

Very often, corporations owe their success to attracting and retaining the right people with the right skill sets and mindset in the right roles. Mastering this craft is essential as digital transformation can be a tremendous management challenge.

Consequently, although the digital transformation of in-house legal teams is unavoidable and even desirable, an integrated approach is essential for digital transformation to be implemented correctly. The angle at which GCs consider the approach must embrace their company’s organisational structure, people, and processes before implementation.

‘The first thing GCs must indentify is the problem they are trying to solve by precisely defining the issue and dig deep into what its root cause is. Sometimes, part of a problem stems from the process, culture, documents or something else which technology can easily have a solution for, but is just not clear at the outset,’ explains Roisin Noonan, chief operating officer and co-founder of oneNDA.

Once the appropriate considerations have been taken into account and GCs understand how their company functions, what matters to the business, and what their internal and external stakeholders want improved, they must avoid the mistake of introducing new ad hoc solutions to solve local problems. Instead, they should work backward from their objectives and the outcomes they are trying to achieve, and in the process, try to identify where they can use the appropriate tools and technologies that already exist within their company.

Legal operations do need to focus on the efficiency of the team and doing work in their own way. However, failing to understand the whole picture and what is of interest to the company as a whole can be a problem, for example, by acquiring a range of individual legal tech solutions that are siloed from one another to solve individual legal problems, will only increase the language gap between legal and business. This will in turn isolate corporate legal departments when the general desire is to see them more fully integrated and work in harmony with the business. This isolation could generate undesirable consequences in the long run. As Groenevelt suggests, ‘GCs should start with an inventory of their department’s capabilities and overlaps, and then only should they start thinking of ways to harmonise the work. So, in short, organisation is key; the technology often follows.’

‘Even when a GC has their house in order and is ready to implement a technology solution, choosing the right solution can be challenging given the proliferation of legal tech in the market,’ Noonan adds.

‘My decisions regarding technology implementation are always influenced by basic parameters,’ Srvatava explains. ‘User friendliness and ease of training my team are on top of my list. Data security is also very important, and so is the cost of course, but I will always opt for the tools which can be integrated into the company’s existing IT environment.’

‘I have noticed that many tend to sway too much by additional functionalities that do not offer a precise solution to their core problems,’ Noonan continues. ‘Instead, the most important thing for them is to stay laser-focused on both the problem which needs to be solved and their business’ highest priority requirements. This is the only way to isolate technology that will meet their needs or to accurately communicate their needs to tech vendors, who, in my experience, are typically transparent about whether they are the right fit for a department.’

One could argue that GCs should also proactively educate themselves on the available digital solutions, with the view that knowledge of what is possible may inspire them in the transformation process, sparking ideas on how to restructure their teams. In any case, the truth lies in the middle between complete restructuring and overhaul of a team in response to new technology and keeping the structure of a team fixed.

Once this analytical work is complete, GCs still need to select a suitable solution among the overabundance of available products. ‘GCs are constantly bombarded with emails from vendors to the point that they lose track of who does what. In my experience, even the benchmarks that are available are influenced by clouded marketing language’, Groenevelt says.

GCs around the globe have developed a favoured and increasingly popular answer to this situation: exchanging ideas with the broader in-house community.

Of people…

A large part of the in-house legal department of the future will be shaped by ongoing competition for talent. Traditionally, the best lawyers with the best technical skills have been poached by law firms who were willing to offer the most lucrative wages. To some extent, this pattern still exists, prompting corporate legal departments to work hard to attract the key people they need.

In-house legal departments might, however, have an advantage over law firms in certain respects: ‘The main purpose of many law firms is still to make the partners wealthier; that is a fact,’ states Parker, but this approach to life is not necessarily what new lawyers entering the labour market are looking for. In many respects, the priorities of the new generation entering the marketplace have shifted.

Jeanne Somma, who is the chief client officer and general counsel at Lineal, and an adjunct professor at two American universities, agrees with Isabel Parker. ‘Students are picky, nowadays’, she says, ‘they are not necessarily interested selling their soul for money.’

An important element in the shift of this model is that life as we knew it a few years ago has changed: ‘The majority of law firms are based on the partnership model. Arguably, partners have not given a great deal of thought to defining the purpose of a law firm partnership, beyond generating revenues to sustain the partnership for the next generation. This is a missed opportunity,’ says Parker, ‘working in-house, lawyers are much more have a clear vision of their company’s ‘North Star’ or purpose – for example, as a lawyer supporting a life sciences organisation, your purpose might be to help customers live longer and healthier lives. We know that young lawyers starting out in the profession are much more likely to be purpose-driven, and it is easier for corporate legal teams to give their lawyers a sense of purpose that is aligned with their company’s vision than it is for law firms’, an ambition that technology contributed to achieving by improving processes and assisting lawyers in their daily tasks.

Recruiters around the world acknowledge that candidates have extended their checklists when they apply for a job, which, as Somma says, ‘does not always match the work pace and lifestyle of a first-year associate.’

On the company side, recruitment has changed as well. The willingness to add more ‘purpose’ to their activity has played a part in this tack change, but mostly, corporations worldwide have had to adapt to new relationships with employees and to their customers’ expectations.

This attitude has gained popularity within in-house legal teams. When in-house teams recruit, they still look at candidates’ legal expertise, of course, but they also look at auxiliary technical skills and general behaviour, generally referred to in recruitment circles as ‘soft skills’. Having the right mindset and a sense of collegiality, being able to work as a team, and eagerness to learn, are highly regarded by GCs, as these qualities are essential in building the flexibility and agility a team needs to quickly adapt to economic changes, new regulations, and digitalisation.

The ever-changing nature of the role of GCs (see boxout on the Role of GC) also appeals to many lawyers. ‘Students understand that multiple tracks are open to them now’, observes Somma, ‘many are interested in more than learning about just the law. They want to learn about the technology side and the business side of the law, and from what I can see, I think that, in the future, it is law firms that will struggle to capture the same amount of good talent and keep it; unless they change the way that they attract people and help them grow’, she adds.

The shape of the in-house legal department of the future will therefore be likely be determined in no small part by education. ‘Law schools might have to rethink their programmes too’, Somma expands, ‘in a company, many people went to either law school or to business school. This means that from early on, they knew they were going to be a lawyer or a businessperson, and this can be problematic.’ Somma’s emphasis on law school’s curricula is motivated by the fact that they are often centred almost exclusively on legal studies, whilst modern-day lawyers must also understand how businesses operate. In comparison, MBA programmes, which do not provide specialised legal education, often do include courses on contract review and other aspects of the legal side of running a business.

…and Machines

The technology landscape is constantly shifting, making it difficult to anticipate which solutions will be available or required in the future. ‘There will undoubtedly be developments in quantum computing, blockchain and AI that lawyers will be able to use – if not tomorrow, then certainly in 15 years’ time!’ Parker suggests.

Nonetheless, we can contemplate the kind of products that are likely to be developed in the short term and who will be developing them. Nowadays, it is not rare to hear of companies that have developed their own client-facing digital solutions intended to help their GCs do their jobs. However, ‘I think the real change is going to be driven by the in-house legal teams themselves’, Parker says.

Particularly, we are reaching a point where not only do corporate legal teams develop their digital solutions, but they also sell them into the market after white-labelling them. If this trend continues, this could be a significant shift for in-house departments: it would denote both a change in mindset and cultural attitudes within a team, and who will in turn be able to demonstrate their ability to actively bring revenue to their respective company, marking their entry into the heart of the business.

Corporate counsels are just starting to use their unique knowledge and sell it as a full-fledged asset. And as technology matures, it is likely that corporate legal teams will take the matter of digitalisation into their own hands. ‘Nowadays many GCs are extremely capable and forward-thinking, and an efficiently run team, equipped with the right technology can deliver real value to the business, without having recourse to expensive outside counsel. With the right mindset, these teams can do a lot for themselves’, concludes Parker.

Douwe Groenevelt agrees with this conclusion. ‘In the future’, he says, ‘a component of the legal function will be focused on technology, and possibly dedicated to developing tech solutions in-house.’

These, however, remain organisational matters, and the main goal of any team restructuring is to create synergies within an organisation and better integrate the legal function with the rest of the company. ‘The way I foresee this’, continues Groenevelt, ‘is that the corporate lawyers will play an ever-growing role as strategic business partners. And if the in-house departments are asked to do more with the same human resources or less, they will likely have to use technology to simplify, streamline and automate certain tasks, most likely using data to constantly improve the way they work. I also anticipate that these technologies will have to be used conjointly with other functions within the company, like finance, HR, maybe even communication, and other departments that are now still slightly isolated from business, to give operations a boost.’

The idea behind this synergetic approach is also to allow legal departments to right-size their teams. On one hand, this means structuring legal teams around the business. On the other hand, and more generally, it will move in-house legal departments away from their traditional role. ‘I see an evolution amongst the very big companies that I work with’, notes Somma, ‘some companies are litigators by nature – banks, for instance – who have large, robust and experienced legal departments. Others do not have this need at all, because they never get sued or their risk of being sued is minimal, because what they do – like mergers and acquisitions, for instance, does not imply that kind of legal risk. These organisations would have built their team around people who know the ins and outs of contract review. I am convinced that we will see more companies, technology helping, which will follow that route, knowing how their business operates, what their spot is in the marketplace, and what legal risk they are taking.’

Isabel Parker agrees, stating, ‘the field can sometimes be a bit conservative, but changes are coming, and lawyers would be well-advised to be prepared.’

Invention is the child of necessity, to spoonerise a common maxim. Either way we read the maxim, it’s worth taking the time to look at the current state of play for in-house counsel – the necessities they currently face and inventions, both social and technological, which have been developed – and may be developed – in response to these new pressures on in-house counsel. After speaking with GCs around the globe, a picture emerges that can be drawn in quick strokes: the volume and type of work have steadily increased, and only accelerated through Covid. GCs, generally, have been left to their own devices by corporate to find solutions to these pressures. However, the legal tech market is, as evidenced in our current global survey, complex, with a multitude of tools available to in-house counsel. How can GCs based in Africa safely ford this river?

As we have seen time and again after speaking with GCs and in-house counsel around the world, the interconnected nature of modern-day life and the systematisation of corporate structures means that the form of in-house counsel is recapitulated in different sectors, across different legal regimes, and different cultures. However, that recapitulation of roles and duties nevertheless reflects the specific socio-politico-cultural aspects of wherever the GC is operating. Additionally, while the form may be similar, the content often differs considerably. After speaking with a broad range of GCs in Africa, it is clear that while there are broad differences, there remain similarities shared between them, as well as similarities with all GCs in the pressures they face and the solutions they have attempted to implement to decrease the pressures that all GCs can relate to, including an increased workload, complexity, and diversity of matters.

Of particular interest within Africa’s growing legal tech scene is how quickly it has grown – and how it is not entirely limited to private practices or in-house legal teams. Rather, many entrepreneurs have attempted to use legal tech to make it easier for the non-lawyer to receive up-to-date information on their legal rights or obligations, be it securing legal counsel or setting up a company. But our focus will be primarily on the specific recent circumstances that affected how all lawyers operated, and how lawyers are trying to use new developments in legal tech to stem the tide.

Based in Nigeria, Tochukwu Okezie is chief legal officer at Interswitch Group, an Africa-focused digital payment and commerce company, active since 2002. Tochukwu explains in detail the developments in in-house lawyer responsibilities, saying: ‘Increasingly, GCs are relied upon by companies to provide advisory beyond their core legal issues. Commercial teams are leaning more on in-house lawyers to provide robust advice that cuts across core legal issues to also include advisory work on commercial positions to be taken by the company. In-house lawyers are expected to understand transactions in their entirety and provide wholistic advice that addresses not just legal issues but other aspects of the transaction’.

Tochukwu’s own experience is not unique. In fact, as detailed in our article on legal tech in the Middle East and the global research report, GCs globally are experiencing an increase in duties and responsibilities, exacerbated by Covid, while seeing little to no increase in funding to plug the gap. The corporate side’s necessity increases the pressure to do more types of work, scale up, increase efficiencies, and do more with less, forcing GCs to invent their way out or collapse under the pressure, just as many other workers in other sectors.

Omisakin Ayobami, legal counsel at Interswitch, provides another point of view regarding the pressures that face legal teams, saying: ‘the pandemic hastened the adoption of tech tools as more in-house counsel teams now work remotely.’

Tochukwu elaborates on the extension of these responsibilities, noting: ‘Some of these “other aspects” include the ability to assess the overall risks of certain corporate endeavors. This ability to assess certain risks points means that today, the in-house lawyer is also considered a risk manager by corporate. In-house lawyers are typically expected to manage legal risks; however, this expectation now extends to general operational risk management as part of their day-to-day assessments.’

Ayobami concurs on the extension of legal duties in in-house teams, but also noting how many African corporations have begun taking the necessary steps to alleviate the strain on legal teams, stating: ‘There have been discussions around the automation of legal processes for in-house counsel teams and the adoption of relevant technology tools for contract management, IP rights protection and litigation portfolio management.’

This new added responsibility of risk management is, however, a skill set that many GCs are not equipped with and requires picking up these skills on the fly. Thankfully, GCs we spoke with generally believe they are up to the task; however, even if GCs can quickly pick up these new skills, where does it end? Risk management was, for many in-house counsel, not on the job description. And whatever new role corporate asks from GCs will similarly not have been listed as a core duty.

Additionally, it’s important to address the acceleration of new duties laid on in-house counsel by corporate due to Covid. The economic and social shocks continue to reverberate back and forth between different subsystems, throwing out of alignment entire industries that had been held in a tenuous equilibrium. And for GCs, this means quickly responding to several large-scale corporate problems, often with little space to rest in between each problem.

Tochukwu explains: ‘The global pandemic offered up different scenarios that underscored the in-house lawyer as an operational risk manager. From dealing with new employees who had been issued contracts to resume employment just before the quarantine orders and the associated hiring uncertainty crept in, to dealing with other pandemic staff-related issues such as mandatory physical meetings or company seminars and events. The risk of staff getting infected at such events, the possible legal action that could arise, and also the operational risks of exposing other staff members to the virus. These are just a few of the general issues GCs faced. In short, the global pandemic accelerated the expansion of GCs and in-house lawyers’ responsibilities and the expectations have continued to grow post the global pandemic.’

Thankfully, legal tech was there during the crisis to help legal teams in Africa. Tochukwu notes: ‘Technology has already helped in-house legal departments improve legal efficiency. For example, having a dashboard that shows all pending requests logged with legal enables the legal operations lead to monitor workloads across the team and ensure even distribution of tasks. With technology, we are currently able to track time spent dealing with tasks and also track the volume of work. The right tool would guide the GC on not just task-allocation but also resourcing decisions.’

Additionally, many forms of legal tech that have been implemented were not especially onerous on companies. ‘Deploying technology into the legal department is not necessarily an expensive venture. Sometimes the company has some existing enterprise solution licenses which legal departments can leverage. This would entail the GC working with the tech team or legal operations team in assessing the existing solutions already deployed in the company’s environment or accessible to the company by virtue of its existing licenses,’ says Tochukwu.

However, costs cannot always be measured in currency. As Ayobami notes: ‘Efficiency, training sessions and added costs should not be viewed exclusively. Yes, it has increased the cost of the in-house legal team, especially since it required a lot of unwanted training for in-house counsel, but these are sacrifices required for achieving greater efficiency. Now we can say the benefits are immense.’

The in-house legal departments of the future

In response to this acceleration of responsibilities taken on by in-house counsel, many GCs we spoke with are thinking towards the future, and what material changes in the structure of the workplace can be introduced to alleviate the increased workload. Some changes are more noticeable than others, and affect in-house counsel differently, depending on their duties. Ayobami’s personal experience involved the noticeable increase in modes of communication both within teams and with external partners, stating: ‘The most obvious changes in recent times are the increased reliance on instant messaging tools for seamless communication and investment in home office set-up for in-house counsel.’

However, while there may be technological developments that facilitate communication both within and outside in-house legal teams, there remains the major structural hurdle that, in the eyes of many GCs we spoke with, corporate has, and will likely be for the foreseeable future, more stingy with the purse strings when doling out funding to in-house legal teams than other teams. But GCs are resourceful, and are looking to the future for methods to take some pressure off their backs.

Tochukwu sets out one vision of the future, saying, ‘in-house legal departments of the future would be more technologically driven. Repetitive processes and basic legal tasks would be automated. Legal departments would lean more on tech solutions that can address the entire gamut of the legal department’s operations – from contract lifecycle tools, dispute and case management tools, intellectual property management, and other departmental-specific functions.’ Tochukwu’s vision isn’t unique – many GCs surveyed express similar desires to see automation of mundane, rote tasks that are done in bulk, which would alleviate much of the pressure and allow GCs to focus on the types of complex work that interest them.

Thankfully, when considering the current structure of most in-house legal teams, we can see the beginnings of the end – that is, legal tech and technological developments in general have already changed much of the normal functioning of in-house teams and GCs; however, in many cases, these changes are still in the early stages, and don’t have the full corporate buy-in required to take off the extra weight.

Tochukwu elaborates on this, saying, ‘currently, a number of legal departments have tech tools to manage different legal functions. Contract management solutions, automated notifications to manage periodic reminders that can cut across court hearing dates, expiration dates of important documents, and so on. For legal departments that manage company secretariat services, they would also consider having a Board Solution to manage company secretarial activities.’

Ayobami foresees different developments, noting, ‘I think the legal industry will see more investment in technology to promote automation of key processes, chief of which are request initiation from business departments, contract review, execution, management and productivity.’

Without immediate access to these tools and technology commonly in place throughout the globe, most in-house teams would be unable to maintain their normal workload, effectively reverting GCs to their pre-internet counterparts. Or, in some cases, a power outage would render in-house legal teams entirely ineffective until power is restored.

However, when looking towards the future rather than dwelling on the past (or the fears of a power outage), Tochukwu provides further thoughts on what he expects legal departments of the future to look like, saying, ‘eventually, I think, legal departments would seek robust solutions that can encompass all its legal operations in a single solution. For example, a single tech solution with different modules that can handle contract management lifecycle, litigation and dispute management lifecycle, intellectual property and other legal functions.’

Ayobami, however, believes that future in-house legal teams will develop more on the personnel side, saying, ‘more than ever, in-house counsel teams have seen the need for building expertise at various areas of law in a bid to increase efficiency. Whilst more specialist lawyers will be hired to advise the company on key areas of its business with lesser dependence on external counsel, the recruitment of lawyers with expertise in multiple areas of law would be the game changer for in-house counsel teams.’

Tochukwu brings up a simple solution to a major issue that numerous GCs have brought up during interviews and in surveys: current legal tech often remains niche, siloed from other systems, and often not cross-compatible. Therefore, even if new legal tech software currently serves an important role that alleviates the increased time and energy required of in-house teams, or even may be highly effective in solving specific problems through automation, the multiple types of software cannot interface with one another. Unification and consolidation of legal tech into a series of core modules that can be independently purchased under an overarching framework would solve these problems of cross-compatibility overnight.

Tochukwu continues, saying, ‘imagine scalable and adaptable solutions that can, for instance, take on new legal functions as they arise, deepen the existing legal functions, embed imminent new tech, for example, artificial intelligence and machine learning into its various modules (which, among other functions would assist in assessing not just legal but operational risks) with a focus of improving legal efficiency. Rather than having multiple incompatible tools, legal departments would be better served by a legal department management solution that can be utilised across a wide array of legal functions while also remaining adaptable as the corporate expectations of legal departments functions continue to increase.’

Contrasted to Tochukwu, Ayobami’s thoughts about the future help clarify the legal tech/legal personnel relationship, noting that in response to the increased presence of legal tech, ‘I think the legal operations and data analytics roles will grow into prominence in years to come as more in-house teams in Nigeria see the need for both. Whilst generalist lawyers may meet these operational needs currently, the role would require specialists in the coming years, either non-lawyers who have a good grasp of legal operations or lawyers who have developed core experience in operations. This also applies to data analytics and data science roles as companies CEOs and GCs understand the invaluable benefits that could be derived from the data.’

While there are many forms of tech that quickly embraced cross-compatibility and modularity (think of, for example, corporate software released by Microsoft and Apple), legal tech still remains in its early stages, in what feels to many GCs as lagging behind technological developments that have long been taken for granted elsewhere.

Much of in-house work still is paper-based, which naturally produces an additional step that eats up the time and energy of in-house legal teams. Tochukwu provides some personal experience on this, saying, ‘to bridge the tech gaps in legal operations, it would not be uncommon for GCs to engage non-lawyers in the legal department to manage the digitising of legal operations, for example, or manage the tech, provide advice on implementations and modifications of the tech, extract report friendly data for the GC’s use, and so on.’

On this point, as GCs are well-aware, in-house legal teams are not limited to GCs, but include a large number of staff who are similarly under pressure from corporate to deal with ever-increasing duties. The role of GCs may differ from the roles of other members of their teams, but nevertheless, increases in efficiency due to adopting legal tech will similarly alleviate the strain put on these teams, allowing them to provide better service and with less workload. This is something that the corporate side should take seriously. A happy in-house team makes for a better in-house team.

Ayobami notes how these developments on the corporate side of businesses will inevitably influence hiring decisions on in-house legal teams, noting, ‘this is key, not only for talent recruitment but also for talent management and talent retention. There is a need for more defined roles that carry a strong sense of importance. However, agile models must be adopted to allow role modification as team members grow and develop other interests. It may take time but over time, a balance will be achieved between business needs and individual interests.’

While this current approach of relying on other members of in-house legal teams to perform much of the drudgery may be currently serviceable, it nevertheless can influence the hiring process in ways that may not be made explicit. Tochukwu says, ‘this current approach of pulling talent to deal with digitising documentation may be a viable approach to handling digitisation of the legal department; however, the assumption is that a GC who would typically have a limited recruitment budget would tilt towards employing a lawyer with the same tech skill set as a non-lawyer.’

On this point, we see the same general trend in modern-day attempts at automation: oftentimes, what is presented as a completely automated process requires a great deal of unsatisfying, repetitive manual labour hidden behind the scenes, whether it is scores of people directing content moderation on Facebook or Twitter or all the young in-house lawyers filling out forms in a back room. Additionally, those in-house lawyers face the issue of, as mentioned previously, quickly adapting to whatever new duties corporate can devise.

Thinking of the not-to-distant future, these important soft skills present on many modern-day CVs are becoming even more relevant. Even if automation of these manual tasks is fully achieved and the pressure finally alleviated, the ability to cover novel tasks will likely influence the hiring process in the future to an accelerated degree. Tochukwu notes, ‘beyond reliance on tech solutions, or employing lawyers with diverse legal background, it is predictable that lawyers with tech background or experiences working with robust legal tech solutions would become essentials for legal departments.’

And it isn’t just the ability to adapt to new legal tech, but also communicate with other teams in a corporate environment: ‘In the future, the communication gap that legal departments face in conveying user requirements to tech implementers (either in-house or outsourced) detailing how legal departments expect their tech to function would be bridged by these categories of digital native lawyers. The diverse legal experience of the future would not only entail experiences across various aspects of the law but would also include an experienced tech background. Legal resourcing would generally consider legal officers that are knowledgeable and can use these technologies comfortably. A premium would be placed on lawyers who can offer both core legal services and contribute to enhancing legal operational tools.’

Of course, with all these developments in legal tech to automate processes, this does not let lawyers off the hook. Instead, with every new solution comes a swathe of new puzzles, problems, and issues for GCs. Tochukwu rightfully points out that as new legal tech is put in place, ‘lawyers would be expected to continuously review the legal processes and advice on deployment of solutions, automations, tools to track legal requests as they come in, track the response time, track the details of the requester and closure of the request and continuously research and identify alternate solutions that can meet legal department’s ever-growing user requirements.’ While automation may be the most anticipated and desired solution to increasing demands on in-house legal teams by taking of the pressure of many administrative duties, it is in no way a silver bullet.

The modern-day structure of the legal team

Tochukwu elaborates on the current environment and structure of in-house legal teams, stating, ‘it is always important to assist legal teams connect their day-to-day tasks with the larger purpose of the organisation. This creates some form of meaning, purpose and self fulfilment for team members. One approach I have adopted is with regards to management reporting. Management reporting now goes beyond regulatory or litigation reporting as companies increasingly want to understand how legal activities feed into the company’s goals. Working with our legal officers to craft the management reporting, which captures legal activities in a language that resonates with the strategic objectives of the company, serves as a continuous reminder to the legal officers of the larger corporate strategic picture.’

Tochukwu continues: ‘In addition to building a sense of purpose by connecting the dots for legal teams, it is important for GCs to create departmental structures that show a clear career growth trajectory for members of the team. GCs may consider structures that speak to areas of responsibility, supervisory functions over younger lawyers and clear-cut designations. It is important for lawyers to understand their growth path as this serves as an effective motivator.’

Consider, for a moment, how the legal landscape has drastically changed over the past decades as legal tech and other forms of technology have become more readily available. Before the internet and emails or the general digitalisation of documentation, work was limited by the speed of typewriters, phone calls, or fax machines – and before then, the speed of mail carriers. The structure of the modern-day office bears little resemblance to, say, an episode of Mad Man, and with increased efficiencies includes the speed of communication.

Ayobami elaborates on this point, saying, ‘many teams now rely on technology and those who are yet to adopt the same are planning to do so. Even CEOs are becoming increasingly interested in the automation and efficiency of legal processes so it is expected that GCs enjoy more support as they rely more on technology. We now rely heavily on technology to ease our contract management process and the key areas where technology has proven useful.’

Tochukwu gives his perspective on the growing reliance on legal tech, stating, ‘over the last decade, legal departments have taken steps to digitise their manual processes. An example of a manual process I have seen would include activities such as keeping written registers with dedicated staff crosschecking these physical registers daily to ensure important events, reminders, or expirations were not missed. Over time, legal departments became more comfortable with adapting technology for digital record keeping with simple Microsoft tools, for example, Microsoft Word and Excel. This served as a precursor to implementing automations that generate automated reminders to specific staff’.

He continues: ‘Currently, Excel is popular for capturing data, but beyond Excel, other Microsoft office solutions like Sharepoint are handy for capturing data in a useable format. Key of course would be for legal teams to work very closely with Sharepoint implementation teams to ensure that the tool captures all required fields and the right data’.

These modern-day tech tools, although not initially developed for the legal industry, have been a boon for the sector. Many GCs and in-house legal teams rely on this type of software for a broad range of tasks. Ayobami stresses the ease at which off-the-shelf software can streamline processes, saying ‘automating the process through which various departments in the company initiate legal related requests. Technologies in this area, such as SharePoint, also help the in-house counsel to track the number of requests received, nature of such requests and departments with the highest requests’.

Tochukwu elaborates on this point, saying, ‘Sharepoint can be used to track legal requests, assign tasks and timelines, keep records, and so on. Other Microsoft tools like Power BI can be used to extract legal data from Sharepoint or other data sources like Excel to create rich and interactive dashboards showing legal data in a format that helps the GC take intelligent decisions. The visuals created by such tools also enable GCs to present legal data in a language that is easily understood by management teams. Other off-the-shelf solutions promise specific and detailed solutions to address particular legal functions, for example, Contract Management Lifecycle Solutions, Board Solutions, and so on.’

Of course, none of these tech solutions can be implemented without relying on tech support. This universal truth of modern-day corporate organisational structure holds fast in Africa, just as it does globally. ‘GCs require tech guidance to wade through the various technology offerings in settling for the most appropriate solutions for the legal department. It is on this premise that it is envisaged that lawyers with deep tech knowledge would be regarded as valuable members of the legal department’, says Tochukwu.

The issues with using off-the-shelf software by GCs shouldn’t be avoided, however. As Ayobami notes: ‘Whilst SharePoint has proven key in addressing some of these needs, there is a need to rely on customised or bespoke tools to meet specific needs and enhancements.’ Additionally, Ayobami says, ‘A major concern is the applicability of these tech products to specific needs. Tech products seem to be designed for companies in general and not specifically for the in-house counsel teams in these companies which means the in-house counsel teams need to adapt these tech products for their specific needs.’

However, ‘Obtaining internal tech support can be challenging. Tech support for legal operations is not often regarded as mission critical for internal engineering and tech teams,’ as Tochukwu explains. He continues, ‘it can also be challenging acquiring the right tech tool to support legal operations. Scoping out the department’s requirement and matching it with the appropriate tech solution while considering other factors like cost, adaptability, user friendliness, support, and so on, can produce serious roadblocks.’

Imagining an ideal legal tech tool, Tochukwu says, ‘it is common to see tech tools that address specific legal functions, but it would be good to see tech tools that can be utilised across all or at most of the available legal functions. A robust legal department management tool that legal operations teams and the GC can use that tool to ensure the efficient running of the legal department generally.’ This ideal tool would be the Swiss Army knife of tools, rather than just one tool in the toolbox. ‘For instance, rather than shop for a contract management tool, it would be good to be able to acquire a tool that addresses contract management lifecycle, dispute and litigation management, intellectual property management, plus the more complex type transactions involving mergers, acquisitions, and so on,’ says Tochukwu. ‘It would be great to have a tech tool that not only addresses all functions carried out in the legal department but can be adapted easily by legal departments or where necessary with the aid of their inhouse tech team to incorporate all new legal functions under the same tool.’

We spoke with a number of GCs operating in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, given the diverse socio-political climate throughout the region, their opinions differed significantly regarding local politics, the social environment they were operating in, and how advanced the laws they operated under. Nevertheless, what stands out after speaking with GCs in the Middle East is how similar their experiences have been with GCs around the globe. Under our modern-day neoliberal economic system and in response to the pressures imposed on legal teams by the corporate side in response to covid, in-house counsel have seen a significant increase in both volume and complexity of work, as well as breadth of matters.

Their experiences bear strong resemblances to the experiences shared with us by GCs and in-house counsel around the globe, and when read in parallel with our article covering advances in legal tech in Africa, it’s clear that while different countries within the Middle East may differ considerably from one another in their priorities, as well as from African countries, in-house counsel globally face the same problems – and are currently trying to solve them both by shifting the internal structure of in-house legal teams to become Jacks-of-all-trades (and masters of everything), but, more importantly, alleviating many of the difficulties they face by adopting the most current advancements in legal tech. That’s why we have emphasised how GCs and in-house counsel are united in experiencing the same increased pressures from corporate, no matter where they are working and under different legal regimes.

Since these are still early days in developments in legal tech, it may help to consider, just for a second, a counterfactual, which makes it clear how in-house legal teams have changed in the past few decades: imagine a core piece of legal software you use every day… did not work. How could you manage in your day-to-day tasks? You probably couldn’t. Or, if you did manage, you’d be operating at a snail’s pace, and immediately fall behind on other tasks. This, naturally, holds true for almost any current profession that interfaces regularly with technology. Lacking the tools you are accustomed to will lead to a less polished product, inefficiencies, and general slowdown. Add to this how much more complex the work you now do compared to GCs 20 years ago, and you can see how over and over there have been significant increases in efficiency that track developments in legal tech – and, more importantly, how this is a general trend that maps on to the legal profession.

Now consider the everyday life of a GC 10 years from now: you don’t have to know the details about what forms of legal tech they will be using to see how in fields that rely on, in part, advancements in technology can be understood as operating under a meta-induction: throughout the history of in-house legal teams, the trends all go in one direction, and therefore (probably, almost definitely) we can expect these trends to continue into the future, unless confounding changes in the profession push in the opposite direction. They are as follows: the type of work becomes broader, more complex, and increases in volume. Alongside this growth in volume, breadth and complexity, legal teams rarely (if ever) see comparable increases in the size of their teams and available budget. However, what often does develop alongside the increased burdens comes advances in technology that alleviate the increased additional strains put on in-house legal teams. Thus, in a way, this meta-induction is optimistic, rather than pessimistic – so long as there are no major paradigm shifts or legal tech hits a major stumbling block that throw a spanner in the works.

GCs in Jordan

2009 was itself a paradigm shift for Jordan, which saw the Arab Spring, border closures with Iraq and Syria, and a major refugee influx. Nevertheless, it remains an important commercial hub in the Middle East, connecting Europe and Asia. It is often described as the business capital of the Levant. What it lacks in oil and gas reserves, especially compared to its neighbours, it makes up for in major manufacturing, finance and banking. As Jordan became more entrenched in the global market, it also saw a major increase in exporting manufactured goods like pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. Currently, its main exports include textiles, phosphates, fertilizers, potassium, and pharmaceuticals, often to export partners that include the US, India, and Saudi Arabia. Of note, Jordan is the leading pharmaceuticals manufacturer in the MENA region, and the Government of Jordan considers pharmaceuticals a core part of its economy.

What is of particular interest to international investors is, as Jordan moved towards integrating itself into the global market, the Jordan Investment Commission was formed in 2014 to combat any corruption that could face potential foreign investors. Additionally, the Jordanian government aimed to push for 10% of all energy in Jordan sourced from renewables by 2020, outlined in the National Energy Strategy. BloombergNEF Climatescope 2018 Index placed Jordan as third most attractive investment destination for renewable energy out of 103 countries.

The film and television industry is also a significant part of Jordan’s economy. Arab Telemedia Group remains one of the most popular production companies in the Middle East. Established in 1983, Arab Telemedia Group produces award-winning Arabic TV series and films. Professor Kamal Alawamleh, legal counsel for Arab Telemedia, took the time to speak with us regarding a broad range of topics that have affected in-house counsel and GCs over the past few years, especially regarding legal tech and its relation to the sudden increase of work dealt by in-house legal teams in response to the covid pandemic. He says, ‘The pandemic forced different GCs and in-house lawyers to work from home. As a result, this has led to them dealing more with modern technology rather than traditional means. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other virtual meeting platforms have been a daily necessity for us since that time, even when dealing with local issues. Moreover, different parts of our cases before various courts have undergone major changes, lead by this electronic transformation.’

The changes that GCs have faced by covid aren’t limited to dealing with working remotely, however. Alawamleh continues: ‘different laws especially that relate to employment and employees have undergone a very broad series of change in order to cope with the different changes that we have all seen. Our responsibilities as in-house counsel have expanded as a result. We used to begin and end work at specific times and during workdays, yet this is not the case anymore. We have to get used to working at any time, any day, whether a workday or when we’re on holiday.’

This experience of increased pressure is a universal response from GCs and in-house counsel we spoke with, all pointing to internal pressures from the corporate side to take up more duties relating to obligations to employees, ESG compliance, and other roles – all with minimal efforts to supply them with increased powers to secure requisite funding for projects as necessary, or at least help alleviate the pressure on in-house teams by going on a hiring bonanza.

When thinking about how the in-house legal team of the future will be organised, Alawamleh provides one perspective, saying: ‘I imagine that, in the future, we’re going to see lawyers and other members of in-house teams with a different skill set appointed to deal with specific aspects of different laws and in response to novel corporate needs. This is to say, companies will seek contracts with freelancers, part-time lawyers, and consultants to cover their diverse needs, regardless of whether they work from an office or at home’, which is a unique prediction not made by other GCs we spoke with.

However, that potential future remains open, and does reflect general trends in other fields, for example, the casualisation of faculty at universities or contract work from taxicab companies to Uber and Lyft. Seen in this light, this potential future may not appeal to some GCs who see what was promised as offering flexibility to workers ultimately lead to a lack of job security, increased pressure and workload, and increased competition amongst in-house counsel to produce short-term returns. The question is, if that future remains an open possibility, would it work so well for GCs (rather than for corporate), has it been tried effectively before, and is it something that GCs would embrace or avoid like the plague?

Alawamleh continues, saying, ‘The industry is relying more on legal technologies to improve efficiency, and no lawyer can now work without a laptop or without access to a legal data website that provides them with different legislations, legal precedents, jurisprudence and other primary and secondary legal sources.’ Gone are the offices full of legal texts lining the walls; these days, all that is needed is the appropriate software, a laptop, and legal acumen. Perhaps Alawamleh is on to something with the idea that in the future, there may be a shift away from the traditional in-house counsel model towards a greater dependence on a freelancer or consultant-focused model, especially since with the general shift towards homeworking over the past few years.

On this point there does appear one salient difference between in-house counsel and Uber drivers or an university professor, however – a lawyer’s reputation. You may be personally willing to have a sub-par experience in an Uber or Lyft once in a while and the turn to casualisation of faculty may be due to weighing economic incentives higher than securing a regular set of faculty, but a corporation is not going to risk it all on in-house counsel they don’t trust. Corporations may simply be unwilling to make these risks.

When it comes to legal experience that there’s also been a noticeable shift, with many GCs reporting desiring future in-house lawyers with either MBAs or other business experience, or else the appropriate soft skills to easily take on the broad range of duties in-house counsel face. Thankfully, some in-house legal teams have been able to secure promising young lawyers that appear different from the old cohort. As Alawamleh says, ‘we in our company offered different jobs for different internal and external lawyers and counsels in order to duly cover our different needs. Without this taken place I would say that we would not achieve what we aim to achieve at all. Different young and new lawyers have been given different posts and they are doing well.’

However, now that the major structural problems facing legal teams both globally and in the Middle East have been briefly sketched out, it’s worth addressing if there are any available solutions. On this point, GCs we surveyed are unanimous that legal tech has provided some respite from the drudgery of paperwork. Alawamleh elaborates on this shift towards adopting legal tech, particularly regarding compliance and keeping up-to-date on legislation, saying, ‘I have increased my reliance on technology in recent years. In almost everything I do, when I have to rely on specific data, I now go to a different website to check compliance or to find the legal data that I need. Personally, I mainly use Qistas, a website that focuses on different legal texts in Jordan and some other Arabic countries. I find this website very informative, helpful, and user-friendly. It contains all sorts of different legal data that, without it, I cannot carry on any task that is assigned to me.’

When thinking about the future of legal tech, Alawamleh expresses a shared desire for a truly global search engine for GCs. In the future, he expects the development of ‘a huge data engine that offers different legal texts and data with different languages. We do need this. Even with modern software, we still face different problems when trying to find a specific legal information pertaining to certain jurisdictions.’

On the subject of legal tech and improved efficiency, it’s clear that legal tech has already helped alleviate much of the strain that has been placed on in-house teams. Alawamleh elaborates on the effectiveness of legal tech, saying: ‘technology have absolutely saved costs and improved efficiency. For example, Microsoft Power BI has given us the opportunity to quickly summarise all our activities in charts and diagrams in one or two pages. By looking at these pages that are generated, you can tell where you are, how much you have paid, how much you will pay, how much you have saved, how much you have earned and will earn, and so on. This is very informative, and even the company’s management and shareholders have loved this feature.’

Measurement of KPIs remains an important aspect of legal tech; otherwise, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine its effectiveness outside prima facie impressions. Concrete metrics – the abstraction of experiences away from the particular to the universal – remain one of the few ways to make this comparison. Alawamleh expresses how helpful this is, noting, ‘I do measure the effectiveness of new legal tech we’ve adopted by the outcomes that we can directly experience. Some tasks were taking hours and hours of work, but are now carried out by minutes. By clicking a button that automates the process, you can now carry out tasks that were consuming far too much money, time, and effort.’

However, with abstraction, there is the loss of the specific and particular what-it-is-like-ness that is wiped away when abstracting away into a series of numbers measuring seconds, minutes, and hours in order to measure efficiency. It is with that focus on increasing efficiency that one can lose out on how, with the turn towards relying on legal tech to automate work, the day-to-day experience of in-house counsel has already shifted, alongside an increase in efficiency.

This shift towards automation of repetitive tasks has, perhaps, been the biggest boon for in-house legal teams. Without this software, most GCs would be left without their modern-day tools of the trade, no different than carpenters without their hammer and hacksaw.

With all the legal tech solutions on the market nowadays, GCs and in-house lawyers have numerous ways to benchmark legal tech providers and products. The GCs we spoke with provided some insight into how they approach this difficult task. Alawamleh explains his approach, stating, ‘We usually seek our peers’ advice as per their own experience with different providers and products. We are also usually approached by different providers with different calls and emails regarding their products and services and if we find it suitable for our different requirements, we make use of such products.’ However, other in-house teams expressed frustration and difficulties in knowing beforehand without intense research as to which legal tech would be best suited for their workplace or how to differentiate between competing products.

Additionally, with the growing importance of ESG and its evaluation falling in the remits of in-house legal departments, we face the question of whether technology and digital solutions can play a role in improving a company’s ESG rating. Some QCs we spoke with talked about their personal experiences and country-specific mandates regarding ESG. Alawamleh, for example, says, ‘I believe that in Jordan we are still in need of more time to fully follow and implement ESG. Both Jordan and the company that I work for do take ESG seriously and are always eager to follow and go beyond the minimal ESG criteria. As it relates to legal technology in this regard, of course I would say that the latter plays a very fruitful role in achieving and enhancing our ESG rating.’

And yet, while legal tech can certainly cut down on the production of unnecessary paperwork and streamline efficiency, there is also the difficulty for in-house legal teams of taking on the additional responsibilities for ESG compliance. It is here that it’s clear that the additional responsibilities placed on in-house legal teams and legal tech are interrelated in complex and ever-evolving ways. 50 years ago, it’s hard to imagine in-house legal teams being able to handle the workload that is routinely placed on modern-day in-house teams.

This workload isn’t shouldered entirely by legal teams, however. Modern corporations also staff their own in-house tech support. Legal teams frequently rely on tech support to a significant degree, and it shouldn’t be overlooked how the additional pressures placed on legal teams are also shared by tech support.

GCs in Lebanon

Lebanon is located in the Levant, with its West coast on the Mediterranean Sea, and seated squarely between Syria to the North and Israel to the South. Its population of approximately six million is noted for its high literacy rate, while international corporates know it primarily for its low operating costs when compared to other Middle East countries and its excellent geographic location as a strategic hub for shipping and air transport.

Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, with its port connecting Lebanon to Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and the rest of the world. Shipping is important in Lebanon, with its major port in Beirut connecting Syria to the global supply chain. Connecting Beirut and the consequences of the Belt and Road initiative by China. Lebanon formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2017, due to China expressing a desire to establish commercial ties with Lebanon and placing it as a prominent role within China’s attempt at expanding its soft economic power, unlikely to be replaced by any other country in the Middle East.

However, there remains a relatively small legal market in Lebanon. The Lebanese legal market is smaller than other Middle Eastern countries; consequently, the in-house legal sector is also smaller when compared to its neighbours. Nevertheless, in-house counsel are often high quality, having to deal with numerous regional and global jurisdictions. Coupled with the difficulties for Lebanese corporates and subsidaries in routinely seeking advice from Lebanese private practice, this places in-house counsel as being jacks-of-all-trades and masters of all, able to handle a large swathe of legal matters.

Contrasted to Professor Kamal Alawamleh’s experiences in Jordan, we spoke with Robert Habchi, senior claims and legal manager at Nasco Re Holding in Lebanon, catching up on his thoughts since he sat for an interview for GC magazine in 2019. Nasco Re Holding remains the biggest reinsurance broker in the MENA region and is perfectly placed to discuss the changes that have occurred in recent years in Lebanon, particularly the shift towards compliance.

This shift towards compliance is due to a broader shift in priorities. That’s because in Lebanon the insurance and reinsurance industries remain a significant part of its major attraction to international corporates. In 2019 the market was ranked as 70th largest market in the world, penetration rate of 2.36%, since Lebanon is only 112th in terms of size. Habchi explains the complexities the reinsurance industry faces, and how both the corporate and legal sides of the reinsurance market have attempted to stay at the forefront of technological developments, saying, ‘in the reinsurance field, we now have more and more reliable on tools to treat huge databases, as well as to be able to automatically check compliance of clients/partners with international rules. This is about time efficiency, mainly, when you have some tools allowing you to get the data/information in the quickest way. This can only benefit the team, especially regarding decision-making. Time is of the essence in our business. The most important matter for us when making decisions on which form of legal tech to adopt is the simplicity and ease of its use. I mean by it that we prefer any product that enables us in very few clicks to get the data/information needed for better decision-making definitely has an advantage over others.’

Habchi sees the current greatest hurdle for in-house counsel operating in Lebanon as handling the volume of data they must deal with, saying, ‘I see an automation of the processes, especially as to the control, and treatment of data, without mentioning that clear processes/with automatic trigger of sanctioned entities is more than necessary nowadays’.

As Habchi explains, in his experience in Lebanon, appropriate data collection remains paramount: ‘I would say that mainly tech products are tools designed either to use an internal database or to get data/information that is specific to some task or industry. For our purposes, we would love to see the release of a central platform that was able to compare and gather data of all these other platforms, and assist even further companies for decision-making, enabling more reliable comparison in data.’

It is on this point that Habchi’s experiences differ from Alawamleh’s, since the legal industry in Lebanon must spend a great deal of time and energy on sanctions compliance, contrasted to Jordan’s legal industry. This demands, above all, that GCs remain fully up-to-date not just on legal standards in place but all the facts on the ground.

Impact of Covid, economic crisis, Beirut explosion

Since 2019, Lebanon has suffered one crisis after another, significantly impacting Lebanese citizens, its economy, and, consequently, the legal market. Habchi explained the impact of Covid-19 on the Lebanese legal market, saying, ‘The pandemic slowed down our legal system in Lebanon, with a noticeable lack of efficiency. Compared to France, for example, which tried to adapt as much as possible to keep their economy running smoothly, there was a huge difference’.

While Covid-19 was raging throughout Lebanon in August 2020, another serious catastrophe occurred that literally shook the nation, causing a seismic event of magnitude 3.3 on the Richter scale. As Habchi noted, ‘a major event in the past few years was the Beirut explosion, which affected everyone and all sectors’ in Lebanon. This major shipping nexus was struck in the 4 August 2020 explosion of approximately 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been held in a warehouse at the port of Beirut for six years, after being confiscated by the Lebanese authorities from MV Rhosus. Videos of the explosion circulated internationally following the explosion, including images of falling glass and other debris hitting residents of Beirut. The blast wave was felt as far away as Turkey, Syria, and Israel and it is considered one of the most powerful accidental artificial explosions in history.

The fallout of the explosion was not just immediately felt by the population of Beirut, with the explosion causing at least 218 deaths and over 7,000 injuries, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 citizens homeless, but a major hit to the economic and trade system in the nation’s capital, causing upwards of $15bn in property damage.

‘This is without even going into the fallout of the economic crisis in Lebanon,’ Habchi says, referring to how covid precipitated the Lebanese liquidity crisis, and the Beirut port explosion exacerbated the economic crisis. Ultimately, the economic hit from the global pandemic; a series of protests that began on 17 October 2019 in response to planned taxes, allegations of corruption within the government, and a stagnant economy; and the Beirut explosion ultimately led to Prime Minister Hassan Diab and the Lebanese cabinet resigning on 10 August 2020.

However, even in difficult economic circumstances that affect Lebanon’s people, there remains opportunities for Lebanon to rise out of its deep economic depression, and international corporates haven’t forgotten Lebanon’s continued importance in the international market.

GDPR, employee data protection, compliance

Even though Lebanon continues to struggle through major economic troubles, in-house counsel remain steadfast in advising corporations on legal compliance during the pandemic. GDPR was a significant introduction to the Lebanese market, since in-house counsel had to react to global trends in order to maintain compliance. GDPR came into force in 2018, so while it did not have a direct impact in the Middle East at the time of its introduction, over the past six years in-house counsel have had to ensure companies comply with it, so long as they plan on continuing operating in an increasingly interconnected and global economy, especially for Lebanese in-house counsel and data protection compliance.

Habchi explains, saying, ‘with the global pandemic, a review of the whole business channel in Lebanon was more than necessary, especially with the normalisation and expansion of employees working from home either full or part-time. As such, in my opinion, in-house lawyers’ responsibilities increased dramatically over the past two years, especially regarding matters such as data protection for employees who were working abroad.’

Additionally, in-house counsel in Lebanon over the past few years has seen a related pivot towards covering compliance, especially in some major global industries. The biggest difficulty back in 2019 was that there existed substantive differences in regulations between Lebanon and places like the UK. Since 2019 the region has moved towards introducing regulatory measures in commerce and other sectors. For example, transparency and compliance in banking and finance increased in Lebanon. For example, previously the central bank of Lebanon required banks and financial institutions to have a compliance department and a legal compliance division.

Hibachi continues, noting, ‘there have been other major global changes that accelerated the expansion of in-house lawyer responsibilities as well, with recent unfortunate events worldwide such as the war in Ukraine. I’d say that the role of compliance officers in day-to-day business is more than compulsory.’ He elaborates on this point, saying, ‘with a world more and more globalised and very cautious about sanctions, it is more than essential that legal specialists support and give accurate advice to their management in order that they expand in the safest way without forgetting the prior mission of each company, which is to optimise their profit’.

GCs in the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates remains one of the world’s most attractive business destinations. Having matured far quicker than its neighbours, there is commercial certainty in the market and a strong legal system in place, with mature arbitration and mediation forums. The UAE made a concerted effort to develop business and legal infrastructure for foreign corporates to set up in the country and formed a highly regulated market, set in place in the 1980s with UAE’s labour laws coming into effect. Additionally, the past few years saw the introduction of regulations covering anti-discrimination and other policies, which projects an image abroad that the UAE is tolerant.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) legal systems are mostly based on Egyptian systems of law. When developing these systems, they hired English law professors to help draft these legal systems. However, the legal system quickly overtook Egypt in its complexity and keeping up-to-date with global development. UAE’s constitution is based on civil law – with two sources of law, one being the local level of individual emirates that make up the UAE, the other at the federal, passed by the federal government. Notably, this rigidity of civil law and adopting the form of Egypt’s legislation would not first appear to foster international business; however, it’s the UAE’s willingness to modernise that kicked it all off.

UAE’s innovations include e-courts and e-filing systems. These innovations increase speed of court cases but come at a cost – litigation is oftentimes more expensive. This deters frivolous litigation, to an extent, and funnels disputes into alternative dispute resolution and other modes of dispute resolution seeking compromise outside of courts. But on top of that, businesses tend to avoid disputes in an attempt to preserve longstanding relationships in the market. It is this long-term thinking and aiming to save face within the community by resolving deputes amicably that has developed UAE’s reputation of a market with players that are willing to compromise.

Of particular interest to international investors is the City of Dubai’s work on the Dubai International Financial Centre in 2004 as a special economic zone. The independent jurisdiction has its own civil and commercial laws, codified in English and defaulting to English law in any uncertainty.

The new pressures on UAE GCs

CITI’s head of legal and general counsel Fauzia Kehar provides some insight into how the market’s response to the pandemic placed additional burdens on GCs operating in the UAE, noting, ‘there is an increased focus on “live, virtual interactions” via Zoom. Most organisations encourage people to keep their cameras on. Meetings are entering into the private space of your homes, rooms and surroundings. The camera doesn’t sleep and one cannot switch it off. Back-to-back, non-stop Zoom meetings can induce a sense of “Zoom fatigue”. The pre-pandemic days of meetings with an out-of-conference room interactions, watercooler conversations, fireside chats, and so on, are reducing.’

Building off of Kehar’s experience, Dubai-based Shaun Johnson, Group General Counsel at BEEAH Group, provides some more insight into his own experience: ‘The volume of work grows with business expansion but the breadth of issues that a GC needs to cover also expands as the business evolves. Indeed, Covid has played a part in the expansion of a GC’s role within most businesses. On the one hand, there was a “back to basics” exercise of contract reviews amongst all businesses because the whole legal profession started checking contracts to determine how force majeure provisions actually work in practice. In reality, a significant portion of force majeure clauses had never been invoked prior to this point. This led to amendments such as including explicit references to “pandemic” in the definition of force majeure or the introduction of a new definition called a “Covid Event” in many agreements. The real expansion of a GC’s role during Covid was having to prioritise and quantify “business and operational risks”, working alongside COOs, CFO’s and Audit functions. I was working in Saudi during the first lockdown of Covid and every week we were briefing the CEO and C-suite with risk assessments of the business. I’ve now seen this approach become institutionalised where operational risk is reported first and on a regular basis at management briefings.’

Oracle’s Middle East legal director Fady Zedan in Dubai also expresses how the increased workload as a knock-down effect of the pandemic has influenced his practice, saying ‘since the pandemic started, the in-house legal department was asked to look more and more in-depth into the business mechanisms and how it operates and try to identify issues and pain points caused by the pandemic and its aftermath. It is something that is being discussed within the community as well as a recurring topic in several legal conferences which I have attended following the lifting of the lockdowns.’

Zedan concurs with Johnson regarding seeing an increase in force majeure cases, saying, ‘the most obvious challenges that we had to deal with lately is concerning the definition of force majeure and its implications on contractual obligations. This is becoming problematic due to the fact that force majeure was not legally declared as a result of the pandemic in most of the Middle East countries and we have always highlighted the fact that the pandemic did not make performance of the obligations impossible in the Middle East but rather burdensome which would not call for activating the force majeure clauses in the contracts specially given that there was no official force majeure declaration by the governments in most Middle East countries.’

Kehar continues in her analysis of the additional pressures put on GCs and in-house counsel, explaining how this has affected the development of new talent within in-house teams: ‘What might be slightly concerning (depending on the nature of job or responsibilities assigned), is how we integrate newcomers into their roles. The initial stages when being in a new office setting, not being entirely familiar at that stage with the culture, expectations of the employee and workplace, and so on, whether adjusting would be more difficult or delayed. Managers and supervisors may find it difficult to handhold people through the initial stages of transitioning into their workplace, work ethics, and so on.’

Kehar does note that the dramatic changes due to covid and the overnight demand for technological development do have their upsides, noting, ‘the upside to this is that one is able to interact with colleagues sitting all around the world from literally any part of the world. The ability to work-from-home has resulted in greater flexibility for women and men alike, especially for people who are caregivers, parents with young children, and so on. The pandemic has taught the workforce a different way forward: gone are the days when employers have to see people in the office all the time. There is a greater sense of trust that employers are to now place in individuals when expecting assignments or workstreams to be managed in a setting where the employee is not monitored round-the-clock in a 9am to 5pm office setting.’ On all these points, both GCs and non-lawyer employees would likely universally agree has been a positive social change in the workplace.

Given all these changes in recent years for GCs and in-house legal teams, Johnson provides a succinct summary of what he believes to be the current state of play: ‘Taking a bird’s eye view, in addition to being the custodian for “all things legal” (which of course is very broad), I would say that the revised role of a GC in today’s environment now includes the role of an “influencer” in the following areas: to shape and influence a company’s approach to risk and crisis management; to influence and enforce codes of conduct for the business; to support the ESG agenda across the business (particularly in the supply chain); to ensure transparency in decision making (vis a vis conflicts and disclosures); and to consult on and shape the agenda for diversity and inclusion at Board/C-suite level.’ All these new roles and duties certainly put an additional strain on UAE GCs – and is a likely shared experience by GCs operating in similar markets.

The in-house legal team of the future

These major changes in the legal landscape for GCs allow for the opportunity to reassess the current social and technological structure of in-house teams. As covid demonstrated, these current structures are impermanent and conditional – things can and do change. The question is whether they change for the good or ill, and it is up for us to envision a future for in-house legal teams wherein there is a better workplace environment, then make that change a reality. But this utopianism does need to be tempered with realistic predictions about what to expect and prepare for these likely outcomes.

Kehar looks to the future of in-house counsel and sees a strong integration between tech and the types of issues they will be dealing with, saying, ‘I imagine an entire new set of opportunities opening up as we evolve to embrace the so-called new workplace regime. While some fields of legal work would perhaps be shifted to AI related outputs, I do not think that the growth, development, evolution of lawyers will stop. With so many new arenas at play, I envisage more opportunities for lawyers in fields related to ESG, cryptocurrency-related legalities, metaverse-focused detailing, governance-related focus, litigation, arbitration, mediation – the sky is the limit! As a result, I do feel organisations will bend towards hiring people trained and/or interested in exploring some of the fields that the “old guard” may be less familiar with.’

Zedan concurs with Kehar about changes in the breadth of work will invariably influence the types of in-house counsel that will emerge in the future, saying, ‘surely new points of views and new blood is always a motivating and driving factor for innovation in any profession, and the legal profession doesn’t differ in that.’

However, Kehar gives some insight into the general attitudinal shift amongst in-house counsel: ‘Gone are the days where people expect managers/organisations alone to work miracles in offering career opportunities. Nowadays, each one of us is supported by peers and colleagues that act as “sponsors” rather than “mentors” (as was the previous expectation). You are your own brand name and you develop your brand image based on what you want to portray and what you feel your legacy should be.’

Zedan’s thoughts about the future of in-house counsel is more tempered, noting that no matter which types of work GCs are doing in light of advances in technology – or even if legal tech helps alleviate much of the drudgery, legal expertise will always play a core role, saying, ‘whilst technology plays a crucial part in the in-house counsel’s role these days, the legal acumen and strategic mind of the lawyer remains the main driver behind an efficiently performing legal department and hence, I disagree with people claiming the tech and AI may be replacing lawyers soon since the legal profession is one that requires human cunning and empathy to be able to do it efficiently and ethically’.

Legal tech and the market

When it comes to understanding the current uses of legal tech in the UAE, as the general global trend has gone, most of it has been aimed at increasing efficiency and alleviating the workload of GCs. Kehar says: ‘For me, the biggest change has been through use of technology relating to connectivity that has aided me increasing my network outreach and increased use of search engines and the ability to be informed on changes to the regulatory environment on a real-time basis.’

Elaborating on his own personal experience and planned developments in legal tech, Johnson says: ‘The BEEAH Group is a diversified organisation across multiple sectors, and so we will be using various legal technologies to make each one of BEEAH’s segments “self-sufficient”. By this I mean developing a standard suite of contracts for each of BEEAH’s businesses, using contract lifecycle management platforms infused with artificial intelligence to ask (through ‘chat bots’) the business user a series of questions which enables that business to produce initial drafts of contracts which are relevant to that particular part of the business. I see this being the way that the legal function within businesses evolve because it provides advantages for both sides: the commercial teams get to know and understand their contracts better and they receive their contract drafts quicker. The flipside is that this frees up the in-house lawyers to focus on the more bespoke/complex legal work which is what they are best placed to do.’

Kehar agrees with Johnson’s assessment, explaining that in the future, in-house teams will have a ‘greater focus on digitization. Even the notary regime is now changed to recognise this. There will be a lot of reliance and focus on bettering ways of improving client experience through, for example, introducing electronic submission of documentation (as opposed to hard copies or in person delivery), and electronic signature regimes coming into play.’

Contrasted with some GCs that believe the greatest paradigm shift in legal tech would be the unification of different legal tech products under a core set of legal tech providers, Johnson doesn’t see the current legal tech regime of a multitude of legal tech providers as particularly onerous, saying: ‘At present I am trialing technology providers for each area. I previously thought there could be one company that could cover all platforms, but my research has shown that I shouldn’t be afraid of utilising a “legal stack of technology”. So if I go down that route of using multiple technology providers, then my priority will be to ensure the integration of each provider so that they interface correctly with each other and the existing platforms within BEEAH’s business.’

Nevertheless, Johnson does acknowledge the difficulties in determining which forms of legal tech are appropriate, reiterating that same ‘paradox of choice’ that so many in-house counsel face when facing such a broad set of options, as well as the extra hurdle of determining if legal software will be compatible with already-existing software used elsewhere in the company. He says, ‘there is so much proliferation in the market of legal tech products that it is important to understand their functionality and their compatibility to ensure that what you’re buying is “fit-for-purpose” for the objectives you’ve set for your own legal function. The biggest concern I have (and that I believe other GC’s have) is “compatibility of interfaces”. I have come to the conclusion that no single provider can provide the “best in class” for all of the five areas I am looking at, so now that I’ve decided to use more than one provider, my biggest concern is “will all the platforms talk to each other” and a corollary of this is whether all the platforms will interface correctly with the existing technology within our organisation.’