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A new report highlights how general counsel and their law departments are moving to showcase value and enable business success in the current climate.
Thomson Reuters has released its 2025 State of the Corporate Law Department Report, which features interviews with over 2,400 general counsel, and unpacks the trends and patterns being experienced by those law department leaders.
According to the report, the concept of value is top of mind for GCs, with those department heads considering how their teams offer and provide value across a broad range of applications, and how best legal can deliver efficient and effective service, to meet the rapidly evolving needs of businesses.
The C-suite, the report outlined, gauges success in terms of profit (72 per cent), customer satisfaction (65 per cent), customer retention (59 per cent), employee satisfaction (56 per cent), and revenue (51 per cent). In order to achieve these goals, the C-suite’s top strategic priorities are increasing customer satisfaction (36 per cent), improving operational efficiency (32 per cent), and organic revenue growth (29 per cent).
“Very little in the C-suite definition of success should come as a surprise. Businesses exist to make money, and they need satisfied customers and employees to do that. Generating revenue and profit because of satisfied customers who buy products or services produced by satisfied employees leads to solid share prices for shareholders – a relatively basic formula,” Thomson Reuters wrote.
“The challenge for the in-house legal team arises from determining how best to plug into this formula.”
Clues are offered in how business leaders see potential risks and opportunities for transformational change, the report detailed.
The top corporate macro influences that will have either transformational or high impacts, according to the report, were the rise of AI and GenAI (74 per cent) and explosion in data volumes (57 per cent) – demonstrating the inextricable place for technology-driven efficiency in law departments.
Other influences deemed to likely have significant impacts were: economic recession/cost of living (55 per cent), geopolitical uncertainty and a shortage of skilled labour (54 per cent), and increased regulation (52 per cent).
Speaking about the report, Thomson Reuters director of legal transformation, Tyrilly Csillag (pictured), said: “Whether your business has been impacted by the regulatory, technological, geopolitical turbulence, or all three – the common theme in 2025 is change.”
“Amid this change, corporate GCs are doubling down on demonstrating the value of their law departments and considering how they must work to best serve their business’s rapidly evolving needs,” she said.
The 2025 State of the Corporate Law Department Report cites, Csillag continued, that one in three corporate C-suite leaders believe improving operational efficiency is key to their strategy.
In Australia, she observed, GCs stated efficiency as their top strategic priority, too.
This is why, she said, “legal departments are looking to utilise technology to hand off admin work that has encumbered them for years so they can focus on the higher-level strategic work, such as creating new and operational value, anticipating and responding to regulatory change, and protecting and enhancing the value of their company”.
“It’s no surprise that 67 per cent of respondents cited greater efficiency as the objective behind their increased technology spending,” she noted.
Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in New South Wales, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
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Jerome Doraisamy
