Legal Departments over the nextel 10 years

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How will legal teams evolve 10 years from now? More positive or negative view?

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In my view, the evolution of legal teams in the next 10 years will be positive, as we have the opportunity to transform and deliver value and excellence to our organizations and stakeholders.

Legal Departments are transforming their role from defenders of the business to become business partners, being more proactive and creating value not only reducing cost and risks, for example, avoiding litigations, but also the revenue by accepting some risk when the potential reward warrants it.

The evolution of the technology, globalization, regulation, social issues…the pressure to reduce cost…all of these are transforming the role of in-house lawyers. 

Technology: Like other corporate departments, such as HR and Finance, technology is disrupting the legal industry and creating new opportunities and risks for legal departments. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotic, automatization, digitalization, cloud computing, and big data are enabling legal departments to automate and streamline their processes, reduce costs, and improve quality and efficiency using KPIs to evaluate their performance. This change includes the role of legal operations professionals. A study of KPMG says that in the future, Legal Chief Operations Officers will be just as important as General Counsels.

Regulation and Compliance: The legal and regulatory landscape becomes more complex and produce more uncertainty. Legal departments need observe the new regulation and anticipate to their organizations to be comply and proactively manage and mitigate the legal risks and liabilities. We also have new ethical, legal, and security challenges, such as data privacy, cybersecurity regulations: Artificial Intelligence Act, NIS 2, DORA

Globalization and Diversification: Legal departments are operating in an increasingly complex and dynamic global environment, where they need to deal with multiple jurisdictions, cultures, languages, and stakeholders. Legal departments need to develop a global mindset. A report from Deloitte says that many Legal departments have started to move from a decentralized model delivery to a more centralized model with the ability to serve globally.  In the future, companies may choose to have a central location for their legal department. 

ESG: Legal departments also need to support and advise their organizations on ESG, the legal and ethical implications of their social and environmental initiatives. 

In conclusion, Legal departments are facing a decade of transformation and opportunities. 

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