Hi there,
Are you a GC who is feeling pressure to deliver on GenAI?
As I’ve spoken with GCs about this topic of late (and believe me, there are many of you) one thing has come across loud and clear.
GenAI is no longer an exploratory or theoretical proposition.
The expectation of every function in the business, and particularly the legal function, is — how are you crafting your strategic plan to ensure that GenAI delivers real ROI to the business in 2025?
How are top GCs approaching this challenge?
As one GC recently explained it to me, he thinks of GenAI use falling into two buckets.
🪣 The first is how they (in-house legal) are enabling the rest of the business to use GenAI for their own internal processes. (I know, just a bitty task. No pressure at all.)
🪣 The second is how they as a legal team are using GenAI to deliver legal services to the business.
To that, I asked: “How are you thinking of that second bucket as it relates to external legal spend?”
The answer for him — and most other legal leaders — is that they aren’t. 😣
This is a huge missed opportunity, dare I say an imperative, for in-house leaders.
For most enterprise legal teams, their external legal spend comprises half (if not more) of their total legal spend.
With external pressures — like maybe C-suite talks on the books with your favorite consulting firm 😳 — to control costs, and headcount being the most likely target, in-house teams have got to pull all the levers they’ve got.
You’ve got to own and drive the narrative.
Here are two ways to do it.
📞 Start the conversation with your firms about how they are using GenAI to deliver more value
I’ve been asked time and again:
“When a firm's business model is based on the hours your associates work, what is the incentive to have them work half or a third of that time?”
The reality is that your firms are already improving their margins as they work out new GenAI-enabled ways to deliver the same outcomes in less time.
And you certainly cannot be critical of them for doing so. In fact, you should be demanding it!
The question is who should be benefiting from those efficiencies?
Should they be passing the benefit of those efficiencies — savings 💰 — on to their clients?
That’s why clients need to lead the push by asking for every piece of legal service that they are buying:
How are our firms using GenAI to drive a more efficient, cost-effective, and outcomes-driven delivery of legal services?
And how is this being passed on to “Moi”?
📊 Mind your data
GenAI will soon be instrumental not only in how we deliver substantive legal advice, but in the very operation of how that advice is delivered.
With the right data in place, in-house teams will be able to use natural language queries and GenAI to answer the following questions:
✔️ What type of legal service provider — firms, ALSPs, and flexible legal talent — is best placed to handle a particular matter given the relative risk and need for specific expertise?
✔️ Which panel firms should be invited to participate in a particular RFP?
✔️ Are there firms you aren’t aware of that are better placed to handle a certain portfolio of matters?
✔️ What kind of fee arrangement is the best outcome-driven approach for a specific matter?
✔️ Are your selected legal service providers delivering on the outcomes and price that they’ve promised?
But you won't have that opportunity unless you start capturing the right data.
While the best time to capture that data might have been 10 years ago, the second best time is today.
I can’t think of two more clear-cut opportunities to demonstrate how your in-house team is leveraging GenAI to provide more value and reduce legal spend.
If you’re still scratching your head on how to exactly go about it, I’d be happy to connect you with one of my network of GCs who are doing brilliantly to make this happen.
Just hit reply and I’ll be in touch.
Cheers,
Jim
