Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?

In-house lawyers have the special ability to urge an organisation to confidently undergo change. An in-house lawyer can assuage the fear of the unknown by laying out the legal risks and justifications for certain courses of action. When in-house counsel is reliable and competent, organisations rely on their advice.

We recently supported our organisation in its digitalisation efforts. As in-house lawyers, we have the unique perspective of understanding the law and how the business operates, which is utilised when addressing our internal stakeholders’ concerns.

While legal risks and considerations can come from external counsel, the in-house counsel identifies the issues, assesses the impact of the legal risks on the business, and devises applicable, understandable solutions. It is this expert power that organisations rely on in their journey toward organisational change.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

Corporate legal teams will need to transition from being specialists to generalists, possessing more conceptual skills as opposed to technical skills.

In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Deep Thought, the supercomputer, knew the answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”, but no one knew what the ultimate question was in the first place.

The corporate legal team, as an insider, is in the position to know the facts and issues that an organisation faces. External counsel or even Artificial Intelligence can provide answers, but it is up to the corporate legal team to pose the right questions, and make sense of the answers for the organisation.