There is ever-increasing pressure on senior in-house lawyers to act as not just legal advisers, but as leaders of their organisations, helping hone management decisions that can shape companies for years to come.

This year, in-house teams have been addressing the tripartite assault of nationwide restructurings in challenging times for consumer-facing companies, and unending developments in technology, all against the backdrop of a Brexit that, following last month's general election, is looking perhaps just a shade more tangible.  

These challenges look set to shape in-house teams' strategies and priorities well into 2020, as several leading in-house lawyers explain below. 

Leeanne Whaley – legal director at BT

Leeanne Whaley

For Whaley, "getting our tech tools right" is a key priority to "ensure the bread and butter of legal work is getting done at the right pace, efficiently and within an agreed risk appetite level". 

Whaley adds that advances in artificial intelligence and smart contracts "will go some way" towards filling the gap between the traditional offering of external law firms and the services offered by legal process outsourcing providers. 

"Legal functions need to look to the market to help them get the mix right to get 'business as usual' work done well," she says. "There is still some maturing to do in that space as the market is going through its own transformation with some types of managed legal services offerings more mature than others." 

Dana Grey – director of legal, compliance and ethics at the Pension Protection Fund

Dana Grey

Grey anticipates a "further shift" in the way in-house teams view conduct, diversity and inclusion: "Businesses will no longer see these two key areas as working interdependently from each other because it is hard to have one without the other."

She believes "you cannot have good conduct, and the best outcomes for clients, without having some sort of diversity of thought or inclusivity and it is very hard to have a diverse and inclusive workforce and reap the benefits it brings without having the right conduct".

Nick Hartigan -  head of legal at Kier Group 

Hartigan says standardisation in the legal services sector will be an interesting development, as it is gaining traction for mainstream contracts.

Something to watch out for will be "whether in-house teams will throw their weight behind the standardisation movement at a time when in-house teams are under never-ending cost and resource pressures," he says. Hartigan believes this is "a critical gating milestone to structural change in the legal services market".

He also predicts a focus on increasingly rounded lawyers in 2020, which is "quite rightly becoming a key priority for high performing in-house teams at junior- and mid-level".

In light of initiatives such as the Bionic Lawyer project, Hartigan anticipates "more forward-looking law firms hiring specialists to build out lawyer capabilities in areas like presentation skills, resilience and impactfulness, and in turn, "offering the use of these specialists to clients".

Henry Kennedy -  general counsel at Imagination

Henry Kennedy

Kennedy expects in-house lawyers in a variety of different sectors, including in the experiential marketing sector, will need to "get to grips with the new and creative use cases for facial recognition technology" in 2020, "so that their businesses can use this technology to push boundaries but within the framework of the law". 

 

Katherine Woods – deputy general counsel at Mitie 

Katherine Woods

Woods hopes the industry will enjoy some stability. Of particular interest will be how the sector reacts after "a volatile few months", when Brexit goes ahead.

Another notable move for the market in 2020 will be in-house teams increasingly using flexible ways of resourcing, says Woods, as relationships with those providing short-term resource "frees up capacity to focus on the more strategic side of things". 

Sarah Binder – general counsel at Pizza Hut

Sarah Binder

For Binder, the focus will be the "implementation of targeted rather than wholesale solutions" which can "solve challenges specific to in-house legal departments".

With in-house lawyers appeased by a general election result that has brought a degree of certainty to the markets, Binder predicts that, assuming Brexit goes ahead in early 2020, there will be a focus on "the requirements in the new trade deals, both with the EU and other key trading partners going forward".

Well-being at work is equally pivotal for in-house lawyers in 2020: "As the breadth of the role of in-house legal functions continues to extend, it continues to be more important than ever to ensure employees are seeking to achieve a work-life balance – especially for those who may have exited private practice for that reason." 

Kate Burns – general counsel at Notonthehighstreet.com

Kate Burns

Burns echoes others in highlighting the importance of technology for in-house lawyers in the next year, with regulators focusing on digital, particularly relating to its impact on consumers and the users of the services it facilitates.

"We welcome any laws that encourage transparency and fairness," she says, adding that one hope is that regulators will "engage with the businesses involved so that we can ensure there is a clear understanding of how we operate before the relevant rules are finalised".