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General counsel are significantly increasing budgets and making strategic investments in legal talent to navigate ongoing uncertainty, according to new research.
As organisations face new challenges and economic disruptions, new data from global flexible resourcing firm Axiom has revealed how general counsel and legal department heads navigate complex in-house environments.
According to Axiom’s fourth annual general counsel survey report, Investing For Uncertainty: How GCs Are Building Resilient Legal Departments in 2025, the three top priorities for their legal departments this year are strategic resource optimisation, legal operations development, and legal tech implementation.
The report surveyed 500 general counsel, deputy general counsel, and chief legal officers across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions and found that across the world, 83 per cent of respondents reported budget increases, with a 10 per cent increase on average.
Additionally, 87 per cent have increased their budgets on legal operations, an 11 per cent increase on average.
GCs also reported that key priorities for their departments this year were legal operations – including process standardisation, resource allocation, and performance metrics – and strategic resourcing, including better use of flexible talent solutions, specialised expertise acquisition, and balanced outsourcing models.
However, despite budget increases, nearly half (47 per cent) of global GCs reported that their departments remain insufficiently resourced. They noted better value (37 per cent), specialised expertise (35 per cent), cost efficiency (35 per cent), practical advice (32 per cent), and rapid deployment (32 per cent) as priorities moving forward.
Additionally, nearly all respondents (93 per cent) said flexible legal talent services and solutions were part of their 2025 resourcing strategy to boost capacity and optimise budgets. Ninety-seven per cent of GCs reported regrets after outsourcing over a quarter of their legal matters, with complaints including impractical advice (37 per cent), excessive administration (32 per cent), and inadequate business acumen (31 per cent).
Across the globe, Australia leads the charge in exploring flexible staffing options, with 68 per cent of GCs citing this as a top priority. Australian legal departments also expect higher returns from alternative providers, with 32 per cent anticipating 21-30 per cent cost savings compared to the global average of 16 per cent.
Axiom managing director and Australia head Jacob Flax (pictured) said that compared to their global counterparts, Australian GCs are more focused on strategic business imperatives when navigating uncertainty.
“While, globally, most legal leaders share a common approach to investing for uncertainty, Australian legal leaders are prioritising the business impact of these investments rather than just efficiency and cost savings,” he told Lawyers Weekly.
“They’re creating more agile resource models that bring specialised expertise right where and when it’s needed. It’s a practical, business-aligned approach that reflects how Australian in-house teams are confidently adapting to global uncertainty on their own terms.”
The report also showed that GCs are channelling budget increases into legal operations, with 80 per cent of organisations either maintaining or implementing dedicated legal ops functions. Eighty-seven per cent of GCs said they were increasing their legal ops investment, with increases ranging from 2 per cent to 25 per cent.
Australian GCs said they were investing in legal operations because of vendor management and outside counsel (34.5 per cent), compliance and risk management (32.7 per cent), managing legal technology solutions (32.7 per cent), demonstrating value of the legal department (32.7 per cent), and for data analytics and reporting capabilities (30.9 per cent).
Moreover, 85 per cent of those who currently have a legal operations department said they anticipate another increase this year, resulting in an average increase of 12 per cent.
Speaking about the report’s findings, Axiom general counsel Ashlin Quirk said: “What’s remarkable about these findings is the emergence of a new kind of legal leader. It reveals today’s GCs, DGCs, and CLOs are speaking the language of law and business with equal fluency. They’re not just managing legal departments. They’re building adaptive systems that turn uncertainty into opportunities with greater strategic value for the business.”
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Lauren is a journalist at Lawyers Weekly and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from Macleay College. Prior to joining Lawyers Weekly, she worked as a trade journalist for media and travel industry publications and Travel Weekly. Originally born in England, Lauren enjoys trying new bars and restaurants, attending music festivals and travelling. She is also a keen snowboarder and pre-pandemic, spent a season living in a French ski resort.
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