When you were younger, what was your answer to the old-age question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” If you knew from the start that you wanted to go into the legal profession, chances are you dreamed of being a lawyer – or, more likely, a specific fictional courtroom lawyer like Atticus Finch or Elle Woods (I object!). Because even a young, creative mind couldn’t possibly think up all the roles, responsibilities and jobs available across the legal profession today, especially when such roles were never front and center on Law & Order or How to Get Away With Murder.
And if you answered “astronaut” or “firefighter” as a kid but went on to become one of the many different types of legal professionals leading the charge on legal’s transformation, congratulations! I hope you see yourself in the land of opportunity and aren’t feeling too sad that you don’t get to carry a large hose up and down a ladder all day long.
The fact is, there’s so much career diversity in today’s legal and contract management fields – along with opportunities for learning, growth and advancement – compared to even just a few short years ago. It’s a great time for business-minded individuals and rising generations to consider everything this career has to offer, even if you don’t have the opportunity to yell “I object!” in a crowded courtroom (although, if you can work in “I object” somewhere at work, good for you). And as the job itself continues to change and evolve, technology is playing a critical role in priming professionals for success not only in the legal department but also across the rest of the organization.
I’m a perfect example of someone who dreamed of a career in one industry, only to find myself in the legal field. Before I landed my current role as general counsel at Agiloft, I was pursuing a career in archaeology. I was even enrolled in a doctorate program, chasing my dream of becoming a professor, before I pivoted. I even said I would never be a lawyer. But because I’ve always been drawn to fields that allow me to explore and solve problems, I veered off my original path and onto one where I am truly driving innovation – and getting to have a lot of fun doing it.
The thing is, there’s an endless buffet of things you can do and achieve in this industry. Believe it or not, cross-functional problem-solving is fun (if you’re like me!), because if you hold the keys to the immense amount of data and information in contracts and other legal documents, you hold critical business knowledge in your hands, which can help you make the connections across the organization to find nonobvious solutions to real problems. So, when looking broadly across the legal function and at the information I hold, I think about how my team’s work can accelerate the work of the entire business. There’s so much value in that, and so much satisfaction in being able to see how your impact ripples out across the organization.
If my unconventional career path has taught me anything, it’s that this role really does have longevity, and that’s a major plus. Historically, the legal field has been a late bloomer when it comes to digital transformation, which makes sense if you’ve ever had to do an all-nighter looking through banker boxes to find “the” contract or “the” document. The task of transformation can be very daunting when you know how much data there is to transform. But we’re (fortunately) seeing this evolve, as artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and the like continue to improve and demonstrate their ability to accelerate the revolution. In today’s legal sphere, if you’re not leveraging the transformative power of technology, you’ll fall behind. It’s as simple as that. Now is the time to harness these tools and use them to your advantage – for your team, your organization and your career.
In this article, we’ll explore how the role of the general counsel (GC) or chief legal officer (CLO) is transforming, how technology comes into play, and ultimately, what impact it all has on career advancement.
The Evolving Legal Landscape: New Tech-Driven Specialties
When we think about the different prongs of the legal industry, it’s clear that technology can have a major impact on a variety of areas. For example, contract management can be streamlined with AI-driven tools that automate contract drafting, reviews and compliance checks, significantly reducing administrative workload. Legal research also benefits from tech innovations that speed up processes, offering more accurate findings and results in less time. The list goes on and on in terms of ways tech is transforming the industry. Even using generative AI solutions for things like creating drafts of job descriptions or helping you to achieve the right tone in an email is a nice and easy assist in what used to be a time-intensive process (just how many exclamation points do I need in this email to make me sound friendlier?).
CLOs can truly benefit from this ongoing innovation. CLOs have the responsibility of overseeing the entire legal department and aligning it with the organization’s broader business goals. By implementing the right tech, CLOs can streamline operations, manage legal risks more effectively, and ensure that the legal team is as efficient and proactive as possible. Plus, with technology handling the time-consuming, repetitive tasks, CLOs can focus on strategy, provide more valuable insights to leadership, and drive overall business success. For lean legal teams managing high-volume workloads, these tools can help individuals get their work done more efficiently, which can free up more time to think or recharge. This leads to improved morale and focus, while decreasing the risk of burnout.
The “Traditional” Role of Legal
The role of the GC or CLO has historically been centered around managing a company’s legal risks and ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. The legal department is of course responsible for overseeing all legal matters within the organization (everything from litigation and contract management to compliance and risk management). And the CLO is responsible for advising the senior leadership team, often as an executive themselves, about the legal implications of business decisions, as well as leading or overseeing any disputes that the company may face. Additionally, legal professionals often manage relationships with external law firms and legal advisors, ensuring that the company gets appropriate legal representation while managing its costs.
Beyond these core responsibilities, the CLO often takes on the role of legal “gatekeeper,” ensuring that a company’s operations adhere to legal standards while protecting its best interests. Until very recently, the general perception of the role was that it was focused on preventing legal problems from arising, rather than proactively driving business strategies. And as you can imagine, in that scenario, the legal function might be seen as separate and siloed from the general business operations, with the CLO playing a reactive role rather than being actively involved in shaping or influencing the company’s broader goals or strategies in a way that drives growth and mitigates risk.
If I may be so bold as to say, a siloed legal function and a legal leader who is seen as separate from the business is a wasted opportunity for the organization – and a far less exciting path.
Today, the CLO role is sitting at an important – and far more valuable – juncture, broadening to include strategic business decision-making in real time. And as companies face a more complex and fast-changing environment, the CLO is a key player in driving overall organizational success.
Legal Ops and Business: Driving Efficiency, Compliance and Growth
Legal operations (legal ops) is becoming an increasingly pivotal part of an organization’s broader strategic framework. That said, it comes with its own set of unique challenges. Legal ops professionals are tasked with things like managing complex workflows and optimizing resource allocations, all in the name of enhancing efficiency across legal teams and the adjacent functions they support.
But as these roles evolve, legal teams are expected to shift from traditional responsibilities to more comprehensive, data-driven ones. No longer merely advisors, legal teams must embrace a mindset that values analytics, process optimization and agility to meet the fast-paced demands of modern business. They have to adapt to new technologies, break down internal silos, and align their department with overarching company goals faster and better than before.
Amid this season of transformation for legal ops teams and CLOs themselves, contract lifecycle management (CLM) software – which streamlines and automates the entire contract process, from drafting to execution and renewal – has emerged as a critical tool for legal teams and legal ops professionals tasked with analytics, optimization and meeting the demands of the rest of the business. CLM solutions enable legal teams to manage vast volumes of contracts efficiently, while ensuring compliance, reducing risks and improving speed to market.
What’s more, contracts are proving to be so much more than simple agreements – they contain a goldmine of data that can help organizations plan, operate and perform better. And when CLM tools are used correctly, CLOs are uniquely positioned to distill this information in a way that can directly impact the bottom line.
For the CLO, this presents an opportunity to drive true organizational change by fostering collaborations between legal, procurement and other critical business units. By embracing tools like CLM and encouraging a culture of data-driven decision-making, the CLO can not only optimize the legal department’s operations but also contribute to the company’s overall success. It can help legal teams better track and analyze their own processes and create scalable ways to demonstrate how they are supporting the organization and identifying areas for proactive improvement. This multifaceted role offers the chance to redefine the value of the legal function, positioning it as a strategic, value-generating part of the business.
No Longer the “Department of No”
I strongly believe that the “department of no” stereotype is not only outdated but also harmful. From the very beginning of my in-house career, I was taught to focus on being risk-optimized – finding ways to accelerate the business while addressing risk effectively. The idea that legal departments are there to slow things down is often a misconception. The reality is that at a lot of companies, legal is a true business accelerator, not a bottleneck. When people fall back on this negative label, it creates a reputation that doesn’t reflect the true value of most legal teams, and it can ultimately hinder collaboration and progress and create friction between legal and the functions it supports.
To build a successful legal department and show that it is a business enablement function, it’s essential to hire professionals who bring a broader perspective – those who are problem solvers, open to new technologies and capable of understanding the wider business context. Just as in any other department, the effectiveness of the legal function depends on the quality of the people within it. When I’m hiring, I prioritize good judgment over mere attention to detail. I want someone who knows when the details matter and when they don’t. The second most important trait? A sense of humility and adaptability. Legal professionals must be able to detach from outdated practices and embrace change. In-house roles today are vastly different than what they were a decade ago, and they’ll continue to evolve in the future.
You can be in this field and be an accelerator of business. It’s a mindset thing.
Tech-Driven Legal: Transforming In-House Counsel for the Future
Technology, especially generative AI, is playing a pivotal role in reshaping the way in-house legal teams operate. By automating mundane, repetitive tasks such as document review, compliance checks and contract drafting, AI and automation tools are freeing up legal professionals’ bandwidth and brainpower, allowing them to focus on more high-level, strategic activities. Meanwhile, tools like CLM systems, predictive analytics and AI-powered legal research are allowing legal teams to make faster, more informed decisions, driving business growth.
Moreover, legal tech is creating a more collaborative environment between legal teams and other departments. This type of synergy across previously siloed departments is providing organizations with a powerful combination of increased efficiency and deeper insights into the business landscape, positioning legal teams as a driving force for growth.
Beyond the Lawyers: Essential Roles in In-House Legal Teams
Let’s look at some of the essential in-house legal roles, their responsibilities and how they help the larger organization.
- Legal operations manager/analyst: The legal operations manager is responsible for streamlining the overall legal workflow and processes and has become the connective tissue within the legal team, as well as between the legal team and the functions it supports. Legal operations professionals often implement and manage legal tech like CLM tools and platforms to oversee the budget, analyzing data to optimize the overall performance of the legal team. These are also the storytellers of the legal team, adept at collecting and using data to help better demonstrate the value and effectiveness of the legal function.
- Contract manager/administrator: The contract managers on your legal team are responsible for drafting, reviewing and ultimately managing contracts throughout their lifecycles. They are often the ones leveraging CLM software to more effectively and efficiently maintain the contract database and track key deadlines, ensuring compliance with company policies and legal standards. They’re also the people who interface with the rest of the organization on contract data and performance, as the subject-matter experts in the world of contracts.
- Compliance officer/specialist: Compliance specialists focus on both regulatory and ethical compliance policies, conducting audits and assessments of risk. These roles may be situated within the legal department or other parts of the organization, but they always work closely with contracts and contract details and can benefit from having greater access to the information contained within contracts, which is best accessed through CLM solutions.
- Cross-functional partners: Beyond those sitting directly in the legal department, there are several other roles across the organization that rely on contract details for success in their daily responsibilities. These include vendor relationship managers and other procurement professionals, sales operations professionals, finance professionals, accounts payable professionals and more. They are all critical partners in operations and in many other matters. Do not underestimate the value of forging good relationships with these teams or learning to work collaboratively with them on complex business issues – and especially make sure to seek their input when implementing your CLM system.
- Artificial intelligence: I often hear legal professionals worrying about AI taking their jobs, but the truth is that failure to adapt to AI is more likely to cost you your job at this juncture than the AI itself. AI lacks the senses and human experience that we bring to the table. I’ve worked with tools like ChatGPT, and while they can generate incredible content, they don’t always have the ability to validate or refine information in the ways that are required for legal department output (case in point, obvious or nonobvious hallucinations like made-up case law). The magic happens when you combine human senses and experience with the computational power of AI. It’s a partnership, and when you invest time in learning to engage with AI, it becomes more collaborative and creative in a way that feels natural. Modern legal leaders understand this – they embrace technology with an open mind, acknowledging its risks but also leveraging it to be wildly successful. Think of AI at this stage as a very junior assistant with a ton of energy and unlimited ability to learn and take feedback, but someone whose work you still need to evaluate critically before hitting print or send.
Each of these roles plays a key part in the modern legal department, and these are the common threads they share: contracts, the details within them, and the impact that contract data can have on the broader organization beyond the confines of the legal department. Using the (typically untapped) potential of the data gleaned from contract information, those who work closely with these documents can put more strategic thought into not only the impact this information has on their company but also how perfecting the analysis and strategic use of contract details can affect their individual career journey.
Again, there’s longevity in these roles. You can share the burden of power by unlocking the library of information within contract data and leading the adoption of legal technology and generative AI tools. The truth of the matter is that you must adapt! It’s part of the job now. You don’t have to be an expert, but you do need to hire experts, delegate effectively and identify talent to make it work.
CLM as a Career Catalyst: Advancing in the Legal Industry
One of the key challenges in contract management is the sheer volume of data. I like to call it the “unlocked library of information.” For a long time, contracts were just sitting in a repository, packed with all sorts of valuable info – like renewal dates, notice periods and deeper relationship details, especially in more complex agreements. But these contracts lived in an obscure, inaccessible repository, making it hard to search for what you really needed. Therefore, individual lawyers ended up becoming the sole keepers of that knowledge. They’d even build their own little mini repositories on their desktops, which meant that they were the only ones who really understood the relationships and the details within those contracts. It’s a bit like the chaos of a complicated spreadsheet where only one person knows how it works – if they leave, you’re stuck.
This is where CLM comes in. It helps remove that “human glue” – people who are the only ones with that knowledge. Here, legal teams are presented with more opportunities for growth, as CLM tools allow them to drive strategic change within the organization, demonstrating leadership and decision-making skills that can advance their careers.
There’s also the automation of manual, time-consuming tasks that contributes to professional development. Because the software handles routine tasks, professionals can redirect their focus toward more strategic activities, like analyzing data and identifying areas for improvement or innovation. (That said, the need for in-the-loop humans remains critical – more on that later!) With tools like Agiloft’s no-code interface, users can create and manage custom workflows, rules and AI-driven contract processes without needing specialized programming knowledge. This empowers legal, procurement, sales and the like to take ownership of their processes, further expanding their skill sets.
For example, a contract manager may evolve from focusing solely on contract reviews to taking a more strategic role, analyzing trends and recommending operational changes based on contract performance data. Thanks to the power of technology, legal professionals are better equipped to take on higher-level roles with broader organizational impact – no matter where they currently sit within the hierarchy of the legal team. The result is a win-win: more efficient business processes and more advanced career trajectories for employees who leverage these tools effectively.
The Human Element Remains Indispensable
Obviously, this article is pro-technology and pro-automation, but let’s make one thing clear: The human element remains indispensable. While tools like CLM software and AI are transforming how legal teams operate, it is the professionals behind these technologies who ensure their effectiveness. The integration of technology should enhance, not replace, human decision-making and expertise.
The senses and experiences of a human combined with the insane computational power of AI is the sweet spot that all legal teams should be striving for. Professionals can leverage AI to a point where it is more collaborative and creative, if they make an investment in thoroughly engaging with it.
A high-performing legal team should be composed of skilled professionals equipped with the right tools and empowered to deliver exceptional results. It’s all about having skilled individuals who understand the impact of today’s modern tools and are motivated to use them to their full potential. By doing so, professionals can produce a level of judgment, creativity and critical thinking that technology alone cannot replicate. Not to mention, all of this furthers the organization’s investment in employee development, fostering a positive work culture and promoting the kind of work-life balance that is essential to attracting and retaining top talent.
Leveraging Legal Tech for Career Growth and Impact
As a legal professional, by asking yourself how these tools can improve your team’s work experience to create more time for the things that truly fuel us, you’re not only investing in an upward career trajectory for your team but also prioritizing a healthier work-life balance. When I think about the kind of life I want, it’s all about having more time for the things that truly matter – like being with family, doing work that excites me, taking vacations and spending more time on things that inspire me. And when I look at legal tech, it’s not just about how it benefits my company – it’s about how it helps my team make more time for those things that matter most. When we have time to recharge, we’re more creative, energized and better at solving problems. That’s why I’m such a believer in legal technology: It can really help give people back the time they need to feel their best.
When our tanks are full, we are better equipped for problem-solving and creative thinking – ergo, professionals can make time to think strategically about how they can directly impact the business and accelerate their own careers.