Against that backdrop, the familiar phrase “doing more with less” only tells part of the story. The more revealing question is whether legal teams are doing the right things, in the right way, with the right level of clarity about the value they are there to provide.
Start with purpose, not volume
One of the strongest themes from recent conversations with general counsel is the need to revisit a deceptively simple question: what is the purpose of the legal function? Without a clear answer, legal teams can find themselves drawn into every matter that is complex, sensitive, ambiguous or politically difficult. That may feel useful in the moment, but over time it risks turning the function into an escalation point for everything the business finds hard to place elsewhere.
High-performing legal functions are increasingly challenging that pattern. They are defining where legal must lead, where it should advise, where it should enable, and where the business needs to take greater ownership. This is not about saying “no” more often. It is about creating the conditions in which legal advice is focused on the work that genuinely requires legal judgement.
Redesign the operating model around the work that matters
The pressure on legal teams is not uniform. Some functions are facing constrained headcount and flat budgets. Others have seen additional resource in adjacent areas such as compliance, risk or governance, but with that comes a wider supervisory burden and more interactions to manage. In both cases, the challenge is not simply resource scarcity. It is operating model clarity.
Terms of reference between legal and the business can help, but only where they are more than just a document, but a living, breathing relationship basis. In practice, how we work together across functions successfully depends on relationships, culture, sponsorship and repeated reinforcement. So if a Terms of Reference or Rules of Engagement style document is going to help it needs to address practical questions: what comes to legal, when, in what form, and with what business input? What can be self-served? What can be handled by legal operations, compliance, a shared service centre, external providers or technology-enabled workflows?
Shared service models remain attractive in theory, particularly for repeatable, lower-risk work. To succeed, they need to be designed in a way that builds business confidence from the outset and reflects lessons learned from previous service transformation initiatives. For legal, the preparation matters: clear work-type analysis, service expectations, escalation routes, quality standards and stakeholder communication are essential if the model is to build confidence and deliver consistent value.
AI has changed the work – but not always in the way expected
AI is now embedded in the conversation about legal transformation. Recent market data reinforces what many general counsel are seeing first-hand: technology and innovation are now among the highest strategic priorities for in-house teams, while AI adoption across corporate legal departments has accelerated sharply. The direction of travel is clear, but the lived experience is more nuanced.
For some legal teams, AI has delivered immediate productivity benefits. It can help structure thinking, overcome the blank page, draft first versions of presentations, summarise material, generate talking points and refine the tone of emails. Used well, it can make communication faster and more powerful. It can also reduce friction in administrative tasks that, while necessary, rarely represent the highest use of legal expertise.
At the same time, AI has created new work. Outputs need to be validated. Assumptions need to be checked. Risks need to be understood. Senior lawyers may be able to spot poor-quality or misleading outputs quickly, but more junior colleagues may not yet have the judgement, experience or confidence to identify where an answer is incomplete, hallucinated, mis-grounded or simply not fit for purpose. The result is that AI governance is no longer a theoretical policy issue. It is a live capability issue and therefore a resourcing issue as well.
Responsible use requires more than permission to experiment
Responsible use policies for AI are becoming an essential part of the legal function’s toolkit. But policy alone is not enough. Legal teams need to define what good use looks like in context: which tasks are appropriate, which tools are approved, what information can be used, when human review is mandatory, and how outputs should be recorded or challenged.
The emerging challenge is that AI can make weak processes faster, not necessarily better. It can also generate new types of complaints, disputes or internal escalations where business users rely on AI-generated content without appreciating its limits. Legal functions therefore have a dual role: adopting AI to improve their own effectiveness, while helping the wider organisation use AI safely, proportionately and with appropriate accountability.
Technology adoption is a change management challenge
The legal technology market can make transformation look like a procurement decision. In reality, adoption is rarely won or lost on functionality alone. The way a tool is introduced matters: the narrative, the training, the governance, the incentives, the champions, the cultural context and the extent to which the tool reflects how people actually work.
Legal leaders are increasingly asking a sharper question: where has technology genuinely changed how work is done, and where has it merely added noise? That distinction matters. A tool that helps lawyers get started, structure ideas or improve communication may deliver real value even if it does not reduce total hours in a simplistic way. Equally, a tool that looks impressive in a demonstration may fail if it creates duplication, uncertainty or inconsistent behaviour.
High-performing legal functions treat technology as part of the operating model, not an accessory to it. They connect tools to work types, decision rights, data, governance and service expectations. They measure success not just by usage, but by whether the work is flowing better, risk is being managed more consistently, and legal capacity is being directed towards higher-value activity.
Five questions for legal leaders
For general counsel and legal operations leaders, the path to a higher-performing function starts with asking more precise questions:
- Purpose: What is the legal function uniquely here to do, and where is it being pulled into work that should sit elsewhere?
- Demand: Which categories of work are growing, which are repeatable, and which genuinely require senior legal judgement?
- Operating model: What should be handled by lawyers, legal operations, compliance, shared services, external providers, self-service or technology?
- AI governance: Where can AI safely improve productivity, and where does it create new validation, supervision or risk management obligations?
- Adoption: What behaviours, training and cultural conditions are needed for technology to change work in practice, not just in theory?
The opportunity: from reactive capacity to deliberate design
The legal function cannot remove the pressure facing the business. But it can make more deliberate choices about how it responds. The most effective teams are moving beyond the idea that performance is simply about absorbing more demand. They are redesigning the function around purpose, prioritisation, technology-enabled delivery and clearer accountability between legal and the business.
That shift requires discipline. It requires legal leaders to be explicit about what good looks like, to invest in change management as much as tools, and to build confidence in new ways of working before scaling them. It also requires an honest view of where AI is genuinely improving productivity, where it is creating additional review burdens, and where it changes the risk profile of the advice being delivered.
Running a high-performing legal function when the pressure never eases is therefore less about heroic effort and more about intentional design. It means knowing the function’s purpose, shaping demand before it overwhelms capacity, adopting technology with judgement, and creating the governance and culture that allow people to work differently. In that sense, transformation is not a project that sits alongside legal work. It is fast becoming the work of modern legal leadership.
