General Counsel and head of the law firm no longer talk about when artificial intelligence will arrive – it is here. And visionary appeals are not looking for AI just to do the same work faster. We are not just Pegasus to pull a plow.
GCS now see AI as a force for reinvention. AI does not simply automate tasks or compresses schedules. It changes the substance of legal work. Through the exhaustion of imperceptible patterns, the conversion of risks and enabling new strategic approaches, AI enables the legal teams to operate in a higher insight and effects.
But this AI revolution is not a plug-and-play. Managers have to look beyond the products of the providers and develop their own clear idea of what modern legal practice should look like.
And it requires rethinking what we expect from law firms and how we work with them to provide legal services on a completely new – and generally strategic way.
This means a new mandate for the modern General Counsel: GCS as architects of legal providers of AI-capable legal functions, administrators of an innovative culture and strategic partners who design the entire company beyond the legal department. It means recognizing that AI is a catalyst who can reinvent the way in which legal teams create value.
In this paradigm change moment, however, the AI comment generally concentrated on academic framework conditions, which offer demanding theoretical basics, but only a few instructions for implementation or content-oriented content that are more evangelical and analytically more evangelical and aspirative.
This leaves a gap in which the real perspective should be.
This eight -part series examines how AI becomes a force multiplier for the role and influence of internal legal departments and the resulting and expanding role of General Counsel and Chief examines and leads this transformation of the legal industry.
From small to big too strategic
In-house legal departments have developed through different phases. When the 1990s ended, most companies had smaller internal teams. They could include a GC and only a few lawyers, the roles of which mainly managed the administration of external consultants, was outsourced to the material work.
The dramatic increase in the law firm in the 2000s led to a “big in -house “ara. Here companies built significant legal departments in order to internalize specialist knowledge and control costs. Some teams even competed in the main and specialization.
Now we are entering the Ai-Leveraged phase. Internal teams are getting slimmer. However, these are not the reactive, acting departments of the past. They will be proactive, technically capable and, like product companies, rather than with employee companies scaling and their effects more with new technologies than more employees.
The emerging internal teams will be elite in their essential skills, strategic perspective and the ability to use AI tools. These tools optimize volume and routine work. This in turn enables the in -house lawyers to concentrate on strategy, judgment and company value. In this world, the General Counsel becomes the main legal strategist and legal-tech orchestrator.
The AI strategic imperative
For boards and CEOs that monitor GCS, this transformation represents both an opportunity and a necessity. Companies that use AI-capable legal functions will work with greater agility, sharper risk management and strategy legal support. Those who underestimate this shift have higher costs, a slower execution and a reactive lawyer who has difficulty keeping up with the business.
The business effects are increasingly quantifiable. Several studies have shown that organizations that implement advanced digital transformation – including AI – in functions such as compliance and contract management by 20% to 40%. According to Bain & Co., the most important and sustainable savings come when the automation is associated with a new process of end-to-end processes instead of laying the technology on existing and increasingly outdated work.
But the advantage goes beyond efficiency. In a report from 2025 on legal forces, it was found that organizations with visible, defined AI strategies achieve a measurable sales growth from the KI introduction and use 3.5 times more critical advantages such as better decision-making and improved risk reduction. Nevertheless, only about every fifth company has such a strategy – a gap that underlines the possibility of competitive for those who deal with this transformation.
Real business accelerator
AI-capable legal departments become real business accelerators. When routine work is automated, lawyers are freed to achieve the creative, value -added thinking that a company differentiates on the market.
This is the main shift: AI moves legal teams from attitude of reactive problems with the proactive, data -controlled strategy. It enables you to anticipate risks before you enter, unlock knowledge in complexity and contribute directly to the company's growth agenda.
The next article in this series will consider AI as a capacity multiplier and examine how legal departments are innovative by expanding your own applications for AI tools.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.
An intangible amount of this content was drawn in by generative artificial intelligence.
Author information
Eric Dodson Greenberg is Executive Vice President, General Counsel and COOX MEDIA Group.
Write for us: Author guidelines