Hi there,
A lot has changed since I was a lonely team of one with a laptop and a dream at my first CLOC in 2017. 😫
This year at CLOC, I was surrounded by a sea of yellow, a fantastic and passionate 15-strong team of PERSUITers, all engaged in numerous conversations with many happy and supportive clients — accompanied by the sweet smell of movie popcorn. 🍿
More importantly, it struck me that the audience here has changed, too. As have the conversations I had with them.
While legal ops as a function is growing, it’s not necessarily becoming more empowered. At the same time, the process for evaluating and buying legal technology isn’t getting any easier.
Spend $Ms with a law firm to run a matter with no budget and no agreed outcomes? Easy. Start the clock ticking and send through the invoices at the end of every month.
Spend a small fraction of that on legal technology to save $Ms? “We don’t budget for that.”
Which has led me to this probably unpopular opinion (I’m good at those 🤷♂️ ).
Senior legal leaders want to see change happen but sometimes they are the very ones who are blocking innovation from happening in their teams.
Here’s why.
GCs are delegating responsibility but not empowering their people to make innovation happen.
Rather than prioritizing and driving innovation as a core part of the way the legal function works, I think a lot of GCs feel they “do enough” if they delegate innovation-related initiatives — whether it's digital transformation, automating processes, or adopting new technology — without also empowering their people to actually get it done.
Either because they haven’t delegated the actual decision-making authority along with the responsibility. Or they haven’t given them the right guidance or tools. Or because they’ve not put the right person in that position of responsibility in the first place.
Here’s why it matters to in-house leaders now more than ever.
The AI revolution isn’t going to wait for you.
I don’t mean to sound alarmist here, but the reality is that GCs can’t afford for their team to get stuck in endless meetings, numerous handoffs, and months of deliberation (“stakeholder buy-in’’) before acting on the solutions they need to navigate this time of transition — to not only survive, but thrive through what will arguably be the most tumultuous period the in-house legal function, and all of legal, has ever seen.
Most GCs, or lawyers for that matter, aren’t good at riding the edge of progress. And that’s OK.
But AI has accelerated the changes that we were already seeing in the legal profession and marketplace.
Those changes aren’t 12, 24, or 36 months away like we once anticipated.
They’re here and now.
In-house teams must develop the capacity to move quickly and adapt.
Technology adoption was previously a choice. Now it’s a matter of survival.
So, GCs and CLOs, I’ll ask you a perhaps uncomfortable question:
Are you the one who’s blocking your own people — giving them the responsibility to innovate, without the power and tools they need to make it happen?
And if so, what are you going to do about it?
Cheers,
