Legal teams are no longer being brought in only after strategic decisions have been made. Increasingly, they’re shaping how decisions are approached in the first place, and that shift is altering what it means to lead an organisation, as In-House Perspective reports.

Organisations across every sector are navigating increasingly complex decisions. From geopolitical uncertainty and regulatory acceleration to technological disruption and heightened reputational scrutiny, the pressure on leadership to act quickly and defensibly has intensified. According to the Centre for Legal Leadership, organisations face ‘rapid technological change, globalisation, greater regulation and heightened reputational risk’.

As a result, in-house legal teams are increasingly part of conversations they were once excluded from, and their role is evolving from that of gatekeeper to strategic partner. Those in such teams, whether chief legal officers (CLOs) or general counsel (GC), are no longer being brought in after decisions are made. Instead, they’re shaping how decisions are approached in the first place.

This shift extends beyond the structural. It reflects a broader change in how organisations understand risk, governance and decision-making, and where legal judgement fits within that structure.

From gatekeeper to decision-shaper

The role of in-house teams has moved from identifying legal issues to helping shape organisational responses to them.

Modupeola Olusoga, an Officer of the IBA Law Firm Management Committee, captures the change directly. ‘In-house counsel have evolved from technical advisers to strategic partners at the heart of organisational decision-making,’ she says. Their remit, she adds, now extends ‘beyond compliance into areas such as ESG, regulatory strategy, risk management and governance,’ where they provide ‘commercially grounded judgement and reputational insight’.

The data supports this. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s (ACC) 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey, covering 772 participants across 20 industries and 48 countries, found that 70 per cent of CLOs managed at least two additional areas of work beyond legal, including risk, compliance, privacy and ethics. Some 58 per cent were heavily involved in mergers, acquisitions and other corporate transactions, and more than 79 per cent reported directly to the chief executive officer (CEO).

Olusoga – who’s Chief Operating Officer at Streamsowers & Köhn in Lagos – believes the shift has largely been welcomed at board level. ‘As regulatory and stakeholder pressures intensify, boards increasingly value legal input as integral to sustainable and defensible growth,’ she says. ‘In-house counsel are now expected not only to mitigate risk but to actively enable business outcomes.’ The ACC survey reinforces this: CLOs increasingly seek active collaboration with operations, finance and sales, reflecting a proactive and cross-functional approach to how legal teams now operate across different business disciplines internationally.

Yet Olusoga is candid about the tensions this creates. ‘A natural tension remains between legal caution and commercial agility,’ she says. The most effective organisations, she argues, don’t try to resolve this tension by subordinating one to the other. Instead, they ‘harness this dynamic productively, leveraging legal insight as a strategic compass rather than a constraint’. In sectors such as oil and gas, this is already visible in practice, with in-house counsel championing early dispute resolution and engaging constructively with regulators, while simultaneously helping organisations to reduce dependence on external advisers and improve cost-effectiveness.

The distinction that matters here is one of sequence. Where external counsel identify risk, in-house counsel increasingly help determine what level of risk is acceptable, how it aligns with business objectives and what happens next.

Calibrating risk

Risk tolerance varies significantly between organisations, shaped by sector, culture, governance maturity and the pace of regulatory change. What has shifted is where legal sits in that conversation, and how central its contribution has become.

The compliance landscape is no longer episodic. In early 2025, LexisNexis reported that 52 per cent of in-house lawyers see greater regulation and expanded reporting obligations as the primary way that UK law is changing – a figure that underscores why organisations must embed continuous, risk-aware compliance into their operating models rather than treating it as a periodic exercise.

Reputational exposure has become equally inseparable from legal risk in the digital age. A LexisNexis commentary on managing reputation risk in a digital-first world highlights how in-house teams must now anticipate how decisions on investigations, disputes and communications can rapidly shape public perception. Reputational damage, then, has turned into a core element of an organisation’s risk profile rather than a matter for public relations alone.

Compounding this is the speed at which modern decisions are made. The LexisNexis In-House Legal Technology Report 2025 notes that teams are increasingly expected to deliver more for less while navigating rapid change, which means that risk can’t be eliminated, only managed through agile processes, technology-enabled reviews and the earlier involvement of legal in commercial timelines.

And modern risk is rarely neat or siloed. Regulatory, commercial, cyber, compliance, governance and reputational risks overlap in ways that mean a single decision can trigger multiple exposures simultaneously. In-house counsel are increasingly expected to sit at the centre of enterprise risk conversations, proactively anticipating how one area of exposure may amplify another and ensuring that organisations accept risk consciously rather than by default.

It’s precisely this interconnectedness that makes the calibration of risk appetite so important, and so dependent on legal judgement. As Olusoga explains, defining risk appetite goes beyond ‘abstract policy statements’ and demands ‘a practical and commercially grounded lens that aligns legal exposure with the organisation’s broader objectives and governance framework’. The distinction between what’s legally permissible and what’s strategically wise is one that in-house counsel are increasingly being asked to draw.

Cross-functional collaboration

Translating risk awareness into organisational decision-making requires more than good legal judgement. It requires structural integration. Olusoga describes two distinct perspectives through which this is achieved. The operational perspective maps risks against day-to-day business activities, ‘including supply chains, contractual frameworks, compliance systems and stakeholder impact,’ she says, ensuring that tolerance levels are grounded in business reality rather than viewed solely through a legal lens. The governance perspective, meanwhile, focuses on ‘establishing clear escalation protocols, decision-making frameworks and reporting structures that provide management and the board with visibility into both the risks and the organisation’s response strategy,’ says Olusoga.

The 2025 CLOC Global Institute Insights Report demonstrates how legal operations professionals have evolved into strategic leaders. Here, they’re helped by technologies such as eBilling as well as matter and document management, but also by their vantage point across finance, procurement, compliance and IT. This positioning means that legal risk is assessed alongside commercial, operational and reputational impact rather than in isolation. And this is a shift that’s increasingly reflected in how leading organisations structure their governance and risk committees.

The Enterprise Risk Management Initiative’s 2025 State of Risk Oversight report, produced by North Carolina State University, finds that the risk management processes of most organisations are still not sufficiently integrated into strategy. Instead, risk information is shared largely through ad hoc discussions with management rather than through structured, cross-functional forums.

For in-house counsel, the implication is clear: legal teams that sit alongside finance, risk, IT and compliance in governance structures are better placed to ensure that risk insights influence investment, market entry and product development decisions from the outset. The report also observes that many organisations identify risks through an annual, largely compliance-focused cycle, with relatively little attention given to emerging strategic or market-level threats. This further reinforces the need for legal to be involved earlier in business planning, not simply at contract signing, or post-incident.

Tools such as horizon scanning and risk scorecards are increasingly being used to support this more proactive approach. Horizon scanning, described by legal operations platform Lawcadia as ‘an important strategic tool’ for anticipating emerging risks, trends and opportunities, combines environmental scanning, trend analysis, scenario planning and monitoring and review to give legal teams a comprehensive, forward-looking view of the regulatory and commercial environment.

Risk scorecards, meanwhile, give in-house teams a structured way to rank issues by likelihood and impact, helping leadership compare risks and decide where to act first. Scenario planning and deal simulations are particularly effective when stress-testing an organisation’s tolerance for litigation exposure, regulatory scrutiny and reputational risk, allowing counsel and leadership to work through the implications of difficult decisions before they arise in practice.

The ethical conscience

In-house counsel occupy a position that’s both powerful and ethically demanding. As insider advisers with proximity to boardroom and executive decision-making, they often have early visibility of emerging issues, from governance tensions to market-changing risks, long before they surface in public discourse or formal audit processes. That insider status carries both opportunity and obligation.

The Harvard Law School Centre on the Legal Profession’s Tournament of Influence research highlights the pressures this creates. Around 40 per cent of in-house lawyers report encountering ethically debatable situations, navigating competing logics of legal duty, commercial pragmatism and organisational loyalty simultaneously. The Centre for Legal Leadership – which describes itself as a ‘resource for in-house lawyers on everything other than law’ – makes a related point. It says that in-house counsel must be seen both as trusted insiders and as objective guardians of an organisation’s values and reputation.

When legal is embedded in strategic conversations early, it’s well-placed to help hold the line between commercial ambition and reputational exposure, ensuring that shortcuts that may boost near-term results don’t erode long-term credibility. But the Tournament of Influence framework underlines that influence is most sustainable when it’s rooted in integrity, consistency and clear boundaries. In-house teams must resist the temptation to over-acquiesce to commercial pressure, framing difficult choices instead in terms of risk, ethics and organisational values.

In this sense, the insider role becomes less about proximity to power and more about stewardship of the organisation’s reputation, its governance standards and its long-term legitimacy. The most effective in-house counsel are those who understand commercial pressures intimately while preserving the independence needed to push back when necessary to ensure that long-term consequences remain visible to those making the decisions.

Commercial judgement and the strategic seat

Commercial fluency is now a central expectation for in-house counsel, not an optional extra. The ACC survey shows that 59 per cent of in-house lawyers prioritise business acumen, a figure that reflects a broader shift in what legal leadership is expected to look like. Influence increasingly depends on how well legal understands the organisation’s financial drivers, operational priorities, investor expectations and sector-specific pressures. In-house teams that can speak in terms of profit and loss, cash flow and growth targets are far more likely to shape strategy than those who frame issues purely in technical legal terms.

‘Commercial fluency will be critical’ if in-house counsel are to remain at the heart of organisational decision-making, says Olusoga. Where margins are tight, investors are attentive and competitive dynamics are volatile, legal advice must be grounded in how decisions affect revenue, cost, time to market and risk appetite. The most influential in-house lawyers are those who can translate legal risk into business-relevant trade-offs, aligning their advice with what drives organisational performance and reputation.

The strategic seat for in-house lawyers now stretches beyond legal risk conversations into governance, operational strategy, organisational change, technology and culture. The ACC survey and the Centre for Legal Leadership both highlight that in-house counsel are increasingly expected to connect regulation, operations, stakeholders, governance and commercial objectives in a single coherent view, rather than treating them as separate considerations.

Dawn Stallwood, Leadership Counsel and GC Support at consultancy Floodlight Business, argues that influence also extends to developing capability within organisations. ‘My view is that part of the in-house or fractional GC [role] is to help those in the company grow and learn, and build their capacity,’ she says. In this sense, legal leadership is not simply about advising on decisions, but about strengthening an organisation’s ability to make better ones over time.

Many organisations have placed general counsel and CLOs closer to the centre of power, with reporting lines directly to CEOs and broader oversight responsibilities encompassing legal, governance and compliance in a single integrated function. In-house teams are increasingly expected to drive or co-lead cross-functional programmes on operational efficiency and technology implementation, using tools such as contract standardisation, data governance frameworks and AI-enabled workflows to embed risk-aware design into business processes, rather than apply it retrospectively.

But the closer lawyers move towards organisational strategy, the more carefully influence must be exercised. Olusoga frames this clearly: in-house counsel who are deeply embedded in commercial conversations must balance being trusted insiders with maintaining the independence needed to challenge decisions and ensure that long-term consequences remain visible. Influence, in this context, is most durable when it’s exercised with care and consistency.

Literacy skills

Data and technology literacy are becoming central to the credibility and influence of in-house counsel. As organisations embed AI, automation, cybersecurity frameworks and digital governance into core operations, legal risk is no longer confined to contracts, disputes or compliance frameworks alone, but is increasingly shaped by how organisations design, implement and govern technology itself.

Olusoga argues that ‘data and technology literacy are becoming indispensable’ as organisations navigate AI adoption, cybersecurity exposure, digital regulation and evolving governance expectations. In practice, this means legal teams are increasingly expected to assess technology-related risks, understand data governance implications and contribute to how organisations operationalise responsible AI and digital oversight. Legal judgement is therefore becoming embedded earlier in operational and technological design, rather than being applied retrospectively once systems or products are already in place.

Funke Abimbola, Fractional General Counsel and AI Governance Expert at The Legal Director, believes this evolution is changing how legal leadership is perceived. As AI automates more routine legal work, she argues that ‘the future role is less “legal technician” and more “trusted strategic lens on risk and integrity”’. The shift places greater emphasis on judgement, influence and the ability to help organisations navigate complex decisions responsibly.

At the same time, technological change is intensifying the pace and complexity of organisational decision-making. AI governance, cybersecurity incidents, data handling failures and digital regulatory exposure can rapidly escalate into operational, financial and reputational crises. Boards and executives increasingly expect what Olusoga describes as ‘concise, decision-ready guidance’ from in-house lawyers that can synthesise fragmented legal, operational, governance and reputational risks into clear commercial language that leadership can act upon quickly.

Olusoga argues that the in-house lawyers who remain most influential will be those who successfully combine legal, commercial, technological and leadership capabilities whilst remaining agile in the face of evolving risk. They will be able to exercise balanced judgement across competing organisational pressures, particularly where commercial priorities, governance expectations and reputational considerations don’t align neatly. This includes the ability to engage effectively with boards, regulators, investors and internal stakeholders, making cross-functional collaboration and persuasive communication increasingly essential leadership skills for the modern in-house lawyer.

The expanding role of in-house counsel reflects a broader shift in how organisations understand leadership, risk and decision-making. In-house teams are increasingly valued not for identifying legal problems alone, but for helping organisations navigate ambiguity and make defensible strategic decisions under pressure. In this changing environment, influence is shaped less by technical gatekeeping and more by the ability to connect competing priorities, exercise sound judgement and guide organisations through uncertainty with clarity and credibility. The modern in-house function does more than occupy a seat at the table. It helps to shape what gets decided there.