Engineering Legal Performance

How the GLS Human Capital Line Makes Performance Scalable

1. Executive Premise: Performance Is an Engineered Outcome

Legal performance does not scale naturally. We covered this extensively in our knowledge piece Managing Lawyers to Engineering Legal Performance - Why Traditional In-House Legal Models No Longer Scale. 

For much of the profession’s history, in-house legal teams operated in environments where this did not matter. Work volumes were lower, timing pressure was episodic, and legal advice moved at the pace of scheduled meetings, paper files, and considered correspondence. Performance could be inferred from competence and experience because the system was forgiving.

That environment no longer exists.

Modern in-house legal teams operate in an always-on, high-velocity environment where legal demand is continuous, timing pressure is constant, and the cost of delay is visible immediately. In this context, performance does not emerge from talent alone. 

It depends on whether the system lawyers operate within has been deliberately designed to allow performance to scale, repeat, and endure.

The question facing legal leaders is no longer “are our lawyers good enough?”
It is “is the system they work within engineered for performance at scale?”

2. What “Engineered Legal Performance” Actually Means

Engineered performance is defined by outputs, not inputs.

It is not measured by seniority, headcount, or training spend. It is measured by whether legal can deliver consistently, predictably, and sustainably as demand grows and conditions change.

Engineered legal performance is characterised by:

◼️ Demonstrable / reportable value creation for the Business
◼️ Ability to scale without linear headcount growth
◼️ Predictable throughput and decision velocity
◼️ Reliable service delivery that the Business can count on
◼️ Clear authority and escalation boundaries
◼️ Verified quality, not assumed competence
◼️ Sustainable capacity that survives churn
◼️ Continuous service improvement 
◼️ Verifiably optimised resource utilisation
◼️ Data led decision making leading to better resource optimisation

If these outcomes are not present, performance is not engineered — it is improvised. Many legal teams operate closer to improvisation than they realise.

3. Why Traditional Legal Talent Models Cannot Produce These Outcomes

Traditional in-house legal talent models were not irrational. They were simply designed for a different operating context.

They evolved when:

◼️ Work volumes were materially lower
◼️ Timing pressure was episodic rather than constant
◼️ Legal demand was batch-based, not continuous
◼️ Advice cycles were slower and more forgiving
◼️ Email, instant escalation, and real-time decisioning did not exist

Within that context, it was reasonable for:

◼️ Authority to remain informal
◼️ Legal method to live in individual judgment
◼️ Capability to reside in people rather than systems
◼️ Performance to be inferred rather than measured
◼️ Sustainability to be assumed rather than designed

Those assumptions no longer hold.

What matters now is not whether these models were once sufficient, but whether they can be optimised to produce engineered outcomes in today’s environment. They cannot — because they were never designed to function as performance systems.

4. Performance Engineering Requires a System, Not Interventions

When performance strain appears, legal teams typically respond with interventions:

◼️ More training
◼️ More hiring
◼️ New tools
◼️ Greater leadership intensity

Each may help at the margin. None engineers performance on its own.

The reality is that most in-house legal teams are simply too busy to find the time to become less busy. As a result, hiring often appears to be the most “obvious” form of relief—yet for most in-house teams, it is not a viable option.

Performance engineering requires simultaneous design across multiple causal dimensions — authority, method, structure, infrastructure, enablement, measurement, and sustainability — operating together as a system. 

Addressing one in isolation simply shifts the constraint elsewhere. 

This is the point at which most legal transformation efforts stall. Not because of lack of intent, but because performance is being treated as something to improve, rather than something to engineer.

This is why we have laid our the entire spectrum of human capital consideration across the GLS Human Capital Line. 

5. The GLS Human Capital Line and the System Beneath It

The GLS Human Capital Line is the navigable interface to a deeper performance engineering system. It will be logical, intuitive and recognisable to just about everyone. 

The Line does not create performance - it creates . It allows legal leaders to see, explore, and diagnose the system conditions that either enable or constrain performance.

By visiting each Station on the Human Capital Line and considering how your team stacks up against the best practice performance markers we have set out for that Station - you can self assess you own current status and access performance improvement insights. 

The GLS Human Capital Line is not a collection of standalone Stations. It is a deliberately engineered system, built on eight foundational dimensions that together enable the engineering of legal performance.

The Line makes that system visible is terms that will be familiar to you - but make no mistake, the system is what actually does the work.

6. How the Eight Dimensions Engineer Legal Performance

It is important to be explicit about what follows.

The eight dimensions below are not initiatives to be implemented independently. They are the interacting components of a performance engineering system. Performance only emerges when the system is operated as a whole.

What we believe is that you will never be able to get your Human Capital achieve the spectacular return on investment that they can readily deliver in the right conditions, if you do not design your Human Capital Line in line with these 8 performance driving factors. 

Each dimension:

◼️ Removes a specific performance constraint
◼️ Forces design decisions most legal teams avoid
◼️ Produces observable or measurable performance effects

6.1 Mandate & Authority

Constraint removed:
Ambiguity over what legal does, what it is responsible for, and where accountability sits.

In high-velocity environments, unclear mandate generates rework, defensive behaviour, and internal friction. Energy is spent managing boundaries instead of delivering outcomes.

Design forced:
◼️ Explicit ownership of decisions
◼️ Clear escalation thresholds
◼️ Defined accountability for outcomes, not just advice

Performance effect:
◼️ Fewer border skirmishes
◼️ Faster decisions
◼️ Clearer accountability
◼️ Energy redirected from politics to performance

6.2 Legal Method (Processes & Procedures)

Constraint removed:
Inconsistent judgment and person-dependent outcomes.

Judgment that lives only in individuals cannot scale. It fragments under volume and collapses under churn.

Design forced:
◼️ Codified legal approaches embedded in processes and procedures
◼️ Optimised process efficiency planning (driving scale)
◼️ Clear standards for escalation outside of process and procedure guardrails.

Processes and procedures are not documentation. They are the mechanism by which legal judgment is institutionalised.

Performance effect:
◼️ Repeatable outcomes
◼️ Scalable quality
◼️ Predictable risk application
◼️ Future readiness (for legal tech)
◼️ Ability to scale support without linear headcount growth

6.3 Team Selection & Composition

Constraint removed:
Capability mismatch, senior-lawyer bottlenecks, under-utilised junior lawyers and poor skill development.

Teams built without deliberate organisation design inevitably over-rely on senior lawyers and under-utilise system leverage.

Design forced:
◼️ Role clarity based on work type and judgment intensity
◼️ Deliberate staffing models
◼️ Workflow analysis to drive “matching” of assingments and to drive skill development
◼️ Use of agile and flexible resourcing as capability augmenters

Performance effect:
◼️ Improved flow
◼️ Greater output per lawyer
◼️ Increased strategic capacity
◼️ Planned lawyer specific skill development
◼️ Better cost effectiveness

6.4 Essential Operating Infrastructure

Constraint removed:
Friction, waste, and invisible performance drag.

Without essential infrastructure, legal teams operate on sand. No amount of effort, capability, or goodwill can stabilise performance without foundations.

Design forced:
◼️ Non-negotiable operating systems (DMS, EMS, apex policies, team organisational design, etc.)
◼️ Clear authority, role clarity, and organisational structure
◼️ Embedded access to templates, guidance, and precedents
◼️ Data structures that make work visible and measurable
◼️ Processes and procedures treated as operating infrastructure—not reference material
◼️ Foundational legal tech and future-readiness architecture

Performance effect:
◼️ A stable operational foundation
◼️ Production-level delivery capability
◼️ Visibility into demand, capacity, and constraints

6.5 Team Enablement

Constraint removed:
Execution drag above infrastructure.

Infrastructure makes performance possible. Enablement determines whether it is realised.

Even with strong foundations, legal teams underperform when lawyers lack practical tools, decision support, and access to knowledge at the point of work.

Design forced:
◼️ Deliberate deployment of enablement tools that sit on top of core systems
◼️ Friction removal focused on day-to-day execution, not system design
◼️ Practical guidance embedded where work is actually performed
◼️ Enablement shaped around real workflows—not theoretical processes

Performance effect:
◼️ Faster, more consistent execution
◼️ Increased confidence in legal delivery
◼️ Reduced reliance on individual memory and heroics

6.6 Lawyer Development & Progression

Constraint removed:
Capability stagnation and attrition.

When development is informal and progression opaque, capability does not compound.

Design forced:
◼️ Explicit progression logic
◼️ Capability-based development pathways
◼️ Objective readiness assessment

Performance effect:
◼️ Compounding capability
◼️ Stronger bench depth
◼️ Reduced key-person dependency

6.7 Securing Team Performance

Constraint removed:
Unverified outcomes and assumed value.

Performance that is inferred cannot be improved or defended.

Design forced:
◼️ Explicit performance metrics
◼️ Feedback loops tied to outcomes
◼️ Accountability mechanisms
◼️ Enhanced legal team focus on delivering ROI

Performance effect:
◼️ Measurable value creation
◼️ Continuous improvement
◼️ Credible conversations with the business
◼️ Resource request defensibility

6.8 Continuity, Governance & Sustainability

Constraint removed:
Capability loss through churn.

Without institutionalisation, performance resets every time someone leaves.

Design forced:
◼️ Codification of knowledge and method
◼️ Governance that reinforces standards
◼️ Sustainability treated as a design objective

Performance effect:
◼️ Resilience through change
◼️ Durable capability
◼️ Reduced burnout risk

7. Why the Dimensions Must Operate Together

Performance does not emerge from isolated excellence. It emerges from alignment.

Each of the eight foundational dimensions addresses a different performance constraint. In isolation, any one of them can appear “strong.” In combination, they determine whether performance is actually achievable, repeatable, and sustainable.

When dimensions operate out of balance, predictable failure modes emerge:

◼️ Authority without method creates inconsistency and risk
◼️ Method without enablement slows execution and frustrates delivery
◼️ Infrastructure without capability locks in mediocrity
◼️ Enablement without structure produces short-term lift, not durable performance
◼️ Measurement without development drives distortion and gaming
◼️ Development without sustainability accelerates burnout
◼️ Sustainability without visibility masks decline
◼️ Visibility without ownership produces insight without action

Performance is therefore not the sum of eight strong components. It is the emergent property of how those components interact.

This is why the Human Capital Line is designed, explored, and optimised as a complete system — not implemented sequentially, not prioritised in isolation, and not treated as a maturity checklist.

Engineering legal performance requires all eight dimensions to operate together, continuously, and in balance.

8. Using the Human Capital Line in Practice

At the station level, the Human Capital Line allows legal leaders to:

◼️ Understand what each dimension covers
◼️ See the value it brings to the business and to legal
◼️ Understand the cost of getting it wrong
◼️ Access optimisation strategies and supporting intelligence

This enables leaders to diagnose where performance is constrained and design a targeted, engineered response rather than a generic transformation programme.

9. Why This Is Now a GC-Level Leadership Issue

Expectations on legal have changed — and they are not reverting.

Boards now expect evidence, not reassurance. The business expects velocity, not explanation. Talent markets are tightening, budgets are constrained, and endurance is no longer a strategy.

Most legal teams are not getting meaningful headcount growth. Even where modest increases occur, they do not change the underlying equation. The only rational response is to use what you already have better — in combination with the right structures, methods, and supporting resources — to deliver materially improved outcomes.

This is not a tooling issue. It is not an HR issue. And it is not something that can be delegated.

As conditions tighten, performance leakage becomes visible. Senior lawyers carry work they should not. Juniors under-leverage their potential. High performers absorb load silently — until they leave. At that point, the cost is no longer theoretical.

Keeping your best talent is a commercial imperative. Extracting more value from junior capacity is a free kick. Both require deliberate performance design.

Performance engineering forces decisions about authority, method, investment, and operating design. Those decisions sit with the GC — because only the GC can trade risk, capability, cost, and sustainability at the system level.

This is now squarely a GC-level leadership responsibility. Ignoring it is no longer neutral.

10. Conclusion: From Managing Lawyers to Engineering Performance

The evidence is now clear.

◼️ The old model does not scale
◼️ Performance cannot be improvised at enterprise level
◼️ Legal performance must be engineered

The GLS Human Capital Line exists to make that system visible and usable. What sits beneath it is the performance engineering logic required to let legal performance scale, repeat, and endure.

GLS can help you plan for the optimisation of your Human Capital Line - it all begins with a detailed Current Status assessment of your existing Human Capital environment - out of which clear recommendations to perfrmance engineer your legal team will swifly and efficiently emerge.

11. What Next

The Human Capital Line exists because your lawyers are your most valuable asset — and also your most expensive one.

If performance feels strained, the question is no longer whether something needs to change, but whether you actually know where to intervene. 

Most GCs don’t lack effort or commitment. They lack clear, defensible visibility into how their people are being deployed — and what return that deployment is generating.

GLS can help you fix that in no time - through either  the GLS Human Capital Function Efficiency Audit™ (DIY)  - where you diagnose yourself or - the GLS Human Capital Function Efficiency Report™ (Delivered) - where we do it for you with full optimisation reports.

Running either of these diagnostic solutions gives you access to the data to show, with evidence, where legal capability is being misapplied, where junior capacity can safely absorb more work, and where structural friction is suppressing output and retention.

Most importantly, it gives you a credible way to answer ROI questions about your lawyers — and to act with confidence as you embrace the performance engineering .

If you want to protect your best people, get more from your team without burning them out, and move the Human Capital Line from pressure point to performance engine, this is the logical next step.

Matt Glynn – Final Word

Legal performance does not improve because lawyers work harder. It improves because the system they operate within has been deliberately engineered to let performance emerge.