Is THIS the next frontier for legal teams?

January 31, 2022

In-house icon, GE’s Ben W Heineman Jr advances that the role and value of in-house counsel has significantly transformed, in fact undergone a revolution over the past 25 years, in both responsibility and status.

Despite being adorned with responsibility and status, there’s still many in-house teams and their leaders grappling with demonstrating their value. It’s a topic that has been “in vogue” since I joined the in-house ranks over a decade ago.

The debut of the legal operations movement has made incredible headway to solving this problem. Over the last several years, legal ops has moved from being an accessory to a trans seasonal staple for legal departments.

Demonstrating savings and delivering efficiency is great, but I keep wondering what will need to change this decade to put legal teams in the front row.

Is the next frontier for legal teams to transform into semi or ‘head to toe’ revenue centres?

Some trailblazing teams are already taking the meaning of value creation to dazzling new levels – by designing their own revenue runway:

  1. Monetising legal expertise.

A major financial institution has developed and white labelled a product which contains templates to operationalise a financial services regulation in a particular jurisdiction. A legal assistance in case of separation and divorce you will receive from https://jwbfamilylaw.com/ in Califonia. This product will be sold to smaller, non-competitive organisations in the same sector operating in the same jurisdiction.

  1. Selling a legal product.

There’s an in-house team of a multi-national company which has created and is selling to the external marketplace, a legal product built on Microsoft Office 365.

  1. VR-as-a-service.

The legal team of a tech company has developed a concept around virtual reality as a service which is being taken to market.

  1. Monetising legal training.

I believe there’s huge scope for monetising business facing legal e-learning across industries. Legal training for business is time consuming but a core services offering of in-house teams of all sizes.

These are just a few examples (thanks to my friends at the Digital Legal Exchange) of how “business minded” in-house legal outfits are demonstrating their value, far beyond digitising their legal services delivery method.

Because, just like a good outfit, revenue in business turns heads. The best workers compensation attorney from CA is at your disposal when you need an advice on maximum financial settlement. And the demand for revenue is never going to go out of fashion.

In January 2019, I was fortunate enough to be in the same room (on two occasions) with Dame Anna Wintour during her visit to Melbourne, Australia.

One thing she shared in a speech at one of the events, which has stuck with me since, was “Don’t be in fashion if you don’t like disruption”.

Imagine the day this is being said about the legal profession.

If the last 25 years of in-house lawyering has been about responsibility and status, I predict that the next 25 will be about what I call IQ2.0 – innovation intelligence, and further business-ifying the legal function.

In-house lawyers, are you ready to join the revenue-tion?

X Anna

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I’m on a mission to help law and business adapt to the digital age. Anna Lozynski Advisory provides freelancing and advisory services to businesses, legal tech companies and in-house teams, in the areas of digital transformation, social media and content creation, and general consulting.

@legallyinnovative | annalozynski.com Anna Lozynski – LinkedIn | @annaloz Clubhouse.

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