How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?    

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of having the right people and teams. Businesses need to have highly motivated and skilled legal teams to support their objectives and goals in an increasingly competitive environment. There is a talent war and organisations need to not only provide supporting and interesting work, in a financially rewarding environment, but increasingly need to provide opportunities to be part of something bigger and often with a social purpose or benefit. During the pandemic, the proportion of high value bespoke legal advice needed has increased, given the changing nature of the issues facing business. High value legal teams were able to assist their organisations during this time by providing smart, practical, and commercial legal advice in a time of rapid change. Within the Winc legal team we see ourselves as businesspeople with a law degree, that is there to help our internal clients meet their goals, while protecting the business and managing risk. The more toward commercially orientated legal teams is expected to continue, as the value these teams demonstrate to their organisations is recognised and rewarded. The pace of change is not expected to decrease and many changes to the work environment created as a result of the pandemic are likely to remain long after the pandemic.    

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? 

Technology utilisation and implementation is an increasingly important part of any modern legal department. Legal technology adoption is no longer considered innovation, but rather a core offering to support the increasing need for smart legal advice in increasingly complex business environments. Technology that allows legal teams to provide more efficient and timely legal service delivery and risk management, while also removing low value, routine work will help in positioning the legal teams as trusted advisers, while also providing a more compelling work environment and staff and IP retention. Technology tools that simplify complex processes, manage IP and data and proactively assist lawyers in their work will be the biggest beneficiaries of the increasing spend on legal technology budgets. AI and machine learning tools have seen material financial investments to their product offering and represent some of the most exciting opportunities for in-house legal teams. Already smart applications are reducing the time for discovery by over 90 percent from historical levels, and represent a transformation for the way discovery is managed and associated cost. Similar opportunities for such transformational step change improvement exists in other procedural areas.