"I just want a lawyer when I need a lawyer," said a CEO, who was interviewing a candidate for General Counsel. In only a few words, this statement goes a long way to explain why the law department is one of the last business units to adopt digital in a meaningful way. It's indicative of how some CEOs still see Legal as transactional—not transformational. We talk about how GCs need to adopt a more business-minded posture to propel digital initiatives. However, the onus is also on the C-Suite to view GCs as more than lawyers at their beck and call, but as agents of business acceleration and profit generation. CEOs pay a hefty price when they have legal staff respond to "what is" instead of imagining "what if." Let's do the math.

Global Fortune 500 revenue in 2020 was $33.3 trillion. At current benchmarks of legal spend as a percentage of revenue (just under 1%), that means that every year the Global Fortune 500 enterprises spend in the realm of $320 billion on legal departments. Research shows that digitally transforming the legal department can conservatively reduce costs by 15-20% (that is more than $60 billion of value to return annually); and when combined with the opportunity for gains in the categories of performance/quality enhancement, revenue augmentation, risk reduction, and digital business synergy, the total value capture impact significantly outpaces a pure function of legal spend. At current P/E ratios, that could well exceed $1 trillion of equity value.

X Marks the Spot: 4 Areas of Opportunity to Facilitate Free Cash Flow

CEOs seeking to optimize enterprise performance and value need General Counsel who are eager to reduce costs, promote revenue growth and ease of business. Neglecting to think about Legal's ability to create value across its various domains shortchanges the business, collectively costing the Global Fortune 500 to forgo trillions of dollars in value. To unleash the opportunity that may be driven by the legal department, CEOs need to expand their mindsets about GCs and see them as more than gatekeepers, but as gateways to driving business in the digital age. Taking a much more expansive view of Legal's potential will augment free cash flow in the following four areas: