As the in-house role continues to evolve from legal advisor to business partner, what strategies have you found most effective for stakeholder management and aligning legal advice with business strategy?

One of the particularly exciting aspects of being an in-house counsel is that you can invest time in truly understanding the long-term strategies of the company, while also understanding the various corners of the broader organisation, their workflows and the roadblocks they are facing. Taking this opportunity and investing time is crucial to becoming a highly valued business partner, rather than “just” a legal advisor.

A specific strategy that we have seen providing a lot of value is conducting regular risk reviews with the wider management team. While this might initially seem like a hurdle to speed, for us it has proven to be a powerful business enabler. These sessions allow the team to align on a collective risk appetite, identifying which legal risks are negligible, also in a commercial context, and ensuring the legal team’s energy is focused on the threats that truly matter.

Staying committed to understanding the end-to-end commercial process is crucial, especially in a rapidly changing organisation and market. A practical example of this is, while it is tempting to leave on a busy day, staying in the meeting after the legal agenda items are covered; doing so provides the valuable commercial context and ‘pulse’ necessary.

When you truly understand the short- and long-term strategies of the company, the work streams, and you have an alignment of key legal risks, it is much easier to look ahead. This could come in various forms, from enabling future flexibility between company entities, making sure the governance structure supports future requirements and that documentation is suitable for third-party due diligence, to enabling a Business Development team with fallback positions during contract negotiations.

As the legal team is often deeply involved in various organisational processes, including HR, Finance and Product development, senior members are often uniquely positioned to ensure that the wider perspective is considered in all key decision-making. Speak up and don’t waste that insight. As AI continues to free up capacity by automating repetitive, administrative work streams, it unlocks the bandwidth to apply systematic problem-solving skills to these broader business challenges. By allowing for a greater focus on creative and strategic problem-solving, that adds value beyond core legal fields, it has become a particularly exciting time to be an in-house counsel.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel?

One of the most rewarding aspects of working in-house is that you have to live with the result of your advice. Unlike outside counsel, we see the long-term impact of our decisions, which encourages a pragmatic, creative and deeply invested approach to business success. Particularly at a senior level, appreciating this aspect is fundamental to success.

The modern in-house counsel is expected to be a business enabler, rather than just a gatekeeper, and as such needs to invest time and effort into understanding the business, the interests of the various stakeholders, the competitive landscape. They must not only understand the business of today, but also possess a vision for where the industry is heading tomorrow.

With AI accelerating operational processes, the ability to apply a sophisticated, risk based approach is becoming increasingly important. The modern in-house counsel must identify which risks truly move the needle for their specific company and integrate that insight into a cohesive legal strategy.

With AI speeding up a lot of processes, it is becoming increasingly important to have a clear understanding of which risks truly matter for your company and to incorporate this risk-based approach into the legal strategy.

Being agile to changing work streams and changing business needs is already, and will continue to be, crucial. With AI continuing to define how we work and new tools being introduced or improved almost month by month, the modern in-house counsel also needs to be increasingly tech-savvy, not only to mitigate the risks inherent in new digital operations, but also to identify or support the tools that allow the legal team to meet increasingly compressed deadlines and the requirement for high-impact output.