LexisNexis: Legal has earned influence. Now it needs greater impact.
In-house legal has more influence than ever.
So why do almost half of legal teams still describe themselves as “overstretched”, “cautious”, “siloed” or “hard to access”?
That’s the contradiction at the heart of Incredible innovations: rethinking business with legal at the table, our latest research into the changing role of in-house legal.
The research shows that 76% of in-house legal leaders have considerable or some influence on board-level decisions. Legal has earned a place in strategic conversations.
Influence creates an opportunity. Organisations are rethinking products, adopting AI, redesigning operations and testing new business models.
Legal’s opportunity isn’t simply to assess those decisions once they’ve been made. It’s to help shape them before they harden.
That requires a different way of looking at risk. Risk isn’t only something to manage.
It also tells the business what it needs to design, prove, govern and build before an idea can succeed.
From reviewing decisions to shaping them
Natalie Salunke, Fractional General Counsel, captures the shift well.
Legal can shape and reframe board-level decisions, particularly around risk, governance and structure, but rarely owns outcomes. Its influence depends on commercial credibility, strong relationships and being involved early enough to influence rather than react.
AI, new revenue models and changing customer expectations are driving decisions that cut across technology, operations and governance. Legal questions now emerge long before contracts are drafted.
Across the examples, a consistent pattern emerges.
The organisations creating the most interesting business models aren’t treating legal as a final checkpoint. They’re building legal judgement into the model itself.
Four questions that change the conversation
The research doesn’t present legal as the function with all the answers.
It presents legal as the function asking better questions, earlier.
What are we really selling?
Rolls-Royce answered that question by changing the commercial model itself. TotalCare shifted value from selling engines to guaranteeing long-term performance, making contracts part of the product rather than paperwork around it.
When the business model changes, legal architecture changes with it.
What does the customer need to trust?
The case studies include organisations such as Synthesia and Adobe Firefly, where governance is part of the product itself.
Consent, licensing, training data and transparency don’t just reduce legal risk. They help customers understand why they should trust the product in the first place.
What data can safely become value?
Many organisations already hold valuable data.
The challenge is understanding how it can be used responsibly and commercially.
Legal helps establish the conditions that make data usable at scale, from consent and licensing to governance and sharing arrangements.
Who acts, and who is accountable?
As AI agents and increasingly autonomous services become part of everyday business, accountability becomes a design question rather than a compliance exercise.
The case studies point to examples including Stripe’s work on agentic commerce and Klarna’s AI-enabled customer service, where questions around authority, liability, identity and oversight have to be resolved before those models can scale confidently.
Across every example, the pattern is the same.
Legal isn’t slowing innovation.
It’s helping define the conditions that allow innovation to scale.
Earlier influence needs capacity
That kind of contribution demands time.
The research suggests that’s exactly what many legal teams lack.
Heavy workloads, fragmented information, inconsistent processes and limited technology continue to absorb time that could otherwise be spent on higher-value strategic work.
The research reflects that tension. Just over 52% of teams are currently focused on checking data use and privacy in digital projects, while only around one-third see it as a future priority. Around 40% believe dashboards for tracking legal and risk issues should become a priority, yet only 26% currently use them.
Those findings suggest many legal teams remain occupied by essential work while recognising that better visibility, better workflows and better use of technology could create more capacity for strategic contribution.
Legal can’t consistently shape tomorrow’s business models if today’s operating model leaves little room to do so.
Three questions worth asking earlier
Before a new product, transformation programme or investment moves forward, legal can help sharpen the conversation by asking three questions.
What has to be trusted for this to scale?
Which assumptions about rights, data, accountability or liability does this model depend on?
What needs to be standardised now before growth makes change slower and more expensive?
Used well, those questions turn risk into design information.
The research also encourages legal leaders to distinguish between risks that are unacceptable, manageable and worth taking because the opportunity is strategically important.
Those are conversations that create value long before a contract reaches legal for review.
Influence was only the beginning
Legal has earned influence.
The organisations that pull ahead over the next decade will use that influence differently.
They’ll involve legal before decisions harden because stronger business models are shaped with legal judgement, not simply reviewed by it.
The research suggests greater influence alone isn’t changing the perception that legal is overstretched, cautious or difficult to access. Earlier impact might.
Download Incredible innovations: rethinking business with legal at the table to explore the full research and innovation case studies.
