In House Legal: 2025 - What Really Happened. 2026 - What We’re Actually Going to Do About It.

2025: The Vibe, The Reality, The Things We Don’t Say Out Loud

Caution ruled. Hiring froze. Movement slowed. If you wanted a shiny new role, you probably stayed put. Budgets? Everyone provisioned for next year - but just a little less than last year. That trim is telling: efficiency talk is real, spend is tight.

And yes, there was blood‑letting - but not the dramatic kind. Inch by inch. Under‑performers are harder to exit than they should be. So here’s the hard truth: if you’ve got a head count freeze, protect your best people like the business depends on it -because it does. And use the moment to quietly remove sub‑optimal performance. Don’t carry passengers when the seas get choppy - they will be a liability going into 2026.

Resourcing had its theatre moment. More short‑term assignments, more agency fees - 20 to 30 percent - for the illusion that it’s not a recurring cost. Meanwhile, continuity wobbles and knowledge leaks because nobody owns the glue. It’s a false economy. If you must flex, build continuity into the plan, treat your knowledge as an asset, and stop paying for theatre.

Transformation changed its fuel source. Three years ago, we thought fear would power the train. “Transform or else.” Today? That’s not what’s driving the teams who actually moved. The winners didn’t act because someone was cracking the whip - they acted because they saw the upside. They wanted the win - and they got it. 

There is no scope to “scare people to act” when it comes to transformation. The reality is that there is still too much legitimate corporate “cover” allowing in-house leaders to do nothing. So, if that is you - if you choose to sit it out, nobody’s firing you for it. But if you’re the type who sees the upside - who wants to build a legal function that gets more done without heroics - this was your year. And you know it.

CLMS is still where good intentions continued to go and die in 2025. The trend continued unabated. Buying “feature lists” instead of systems that fit your process remains the #1 mistake. You can’t buy your way to a better operational state with demos and slideware. Process first. Then tech that fits your reality. If your CLMS conversation doesn’t start with mapping your “as‑is” workflows, you’re setting money on fire.

AI threw kerosene on the bonfire - mostly misunderstood. Boards asked, “What’s our AI strategy?” with this silver‑bullet expectation. The reality: agentic systems are emerging—but the wins today are in operational chatbots (templates, approvals, routing, FAQs). Advisory‑grade agentics? Still quite some way off. Keep humans on the loop.

Low‑tech, high‑yield kept winning. Playbooks. Clause banks. Intake. The boring basics delivered the biggest shifts. If you don’t have formal intake, you don’t have data. And if you don’t have data, you don’t have ops. That’s the ladder. Skip rungs and you fall.

Contract review tech matured. Prices trimmed, capabilities clarified, limits understood. Adoption stayed low. That’s a miss. You don’t need bleeding edge; you need faster triage, cleaner issue‑spotting, and fewer hours spent on structured review. “Just enough” tooling should be standard. If you’re not using it, you’re throwing away hours you could invest elsewhere.
 

Budgets evolved in the right direction. Smart teams stopped asking for “more legal budget.” They walked in with investment cases - modelled returns in time saved, cycle time reduced, self‑service adoption up, business enablement increased. Finance can fund clarity. They can champion ROI. They cannot and will not reward entitlement in this climate.

Workloads picked up - but not because of legal drama. Internal change drove a lot of volume - reorgs, transitions, other people’s transformation projects you had to stabilize and steer safely. And here’s the surprise: morale stabilized. The Brownian motion of the last couple of years slowed, and most teams settled into a pressure‑cooker—but a more familiar one. Busy doesn’t mean broken. Sometimes it just means things are moving.

Let’s talk about working from home because 2025 gave us the verdict - and it’s brutal. It works for senior lawyers. It is a disaster for juniors. Full stop.  If you’re a junior lawyer and you think working from home in your pyjamas is a career hack, think again. Most of your learning comes from what you overhear, what you see, and what you absorb in real time. If seniors aren’t in the office, you aren’t progressing. That’s not opinion. That’s fact.

Expect the pendulum to settle at two days WFH - not five. And if you’re junior, avoid teams that live on video calls. Your career velocity matters more than comfy pyjamas. Seniors? You have an obligation to develop juniors. If you’re hiding behind Teams, you’re failing them.

What the Winners Will Be Doing in 2026

The winners won’t chase hype. They’ll chase clarity and compounding wins that won’t bend them out of shape but which will add up fast. 

They’ll start with a current‑state assessment - a data‑based view of how they’re performing and where the bottlenecks live. Not a beauty parade. A truthful baseline.

From there, they’ll benchmark against peer departments - similar industry, similar scale, similar complexity. Benchmarking only works when your mirror looks like you.

They’ll build a wish list that’s more than a wish. A long ‑ form specification of what they want the legal team - or a specific process - to become. Clarity beats aspiration every time.

And then they’ll ruthlessly socialize it. They’ll reduce the list to bare minimums based on change capacity, GLS‑style prioritization logic, budgets, business importance, and the ability to validate resources. That discipline is the difference between shipping and grandstanding.

Implementation will be small and incremental. No big bangs. No bets that rely on big tech to magically fix what process refuses to admit. 

Frequent, low‑risk releases that people can feel week to week.

The contracting function will take centre stage because it’s more mature, more visible to internal clients, and tethered directly to revenue. Wins here count - and they count loudly.

We’re going to make intake real and mandatory - the gateway to data, ops, and prioritization. No excuses. If we cannot make a legal service request protocol stick then legal tech led transformation is a pipe dream. 

And yes, despite our warnings on tech, leaders will still want a “tech win” for the snap‑crackle‑pop effect. Fine. We’re going to stand up the ops chatbot that answers the interruptions that chew your day: which template, who approves, what’s the process. 

There are plenty of low‑risk wins: basic operational agents that route and classify, automated clause banks that surface the right language fast, and AI reviews that make issue‑spotting less manual. Frame them as operational lifts, not magic.

Key staff retention will get deliberate. The best team members will be invited into the plan, upskilled, given broader responsibilities, and cared for - with actual pastoral attention. You want your best sailors on deck when seas turn.

We’re going to formalize hybrid skill paths, reward enablement over heroics, and we’re going to sit down with our A‑players, look them in the eye, and give them ownership of the plan.

CLMS will still flirt like a flame. Even our most disciplined clients will feel the pull. The difference this time is they’ll undertake a readiness assessment, define the specification they need, and use data analytics to drive the decision. That alone will be a major victory.

We’re going to talk to finance with investment theses and report returns quarterly like a product team. We will be speaking the language the Business understands. That language is landing. The in-house leader that can show the ROI to the Business for legal team transformation has no problems getting the Business to make that investment. 

Law firms will still be there. They’ll just have a tougher year. Tough times can make better firms -  sharper, more candid, more aligned with enablement over hours. Law firms will not provide meaningful answers outside of the traditional advisory that they are designed to deliver. 

And we’re going to put juniors back in the room. Hearing how work gets done is not nostalgia. It’s how you build lawyers. Two days WFH is the steady state. If you’re junior, dodge teams that live on video. Your career velocity matters more than comfy pyjamas.

The clients who do the work in 2026 will get palpable, verifiable, demonstrable results. Their best year yet. Time and cost savings delivered back to the business  - often many multiples of their entire legal budget, especially in larger organizations. Success won’t be an accident. It’ll be an engineered outcome.

Careers will diversify. Skillsets will broaden. Outcomes will remain positive. There will be pushback. Time‑based analysis, formal intake, and governance don’t always land softly. The winners will take the medicine and keep going.

The big‑end‑of‑town predictions? Mostly outlier narratives. They describe the few, not the many. But here are some of their calls and our moderation if the same. 

“AI as the operational backbone” isn’t going to define average teams in 2026. Your wins live in ops AI, not advisory.  

“Legal – Compliance - Risk fully integrated” exists in some giant MNCs; for most, silos still hold. Integration starts with shared workflows and common data, not org charts. 

“Strategic partnerships everywhere” is nice if you can swing it; most teams still need targeted support - measure partners on enablement and ROI. “Tech stack convergence saves us” sounds tidy; workflow convergence matters more. 

“Global compliance pressure intensifies” is true; don’t freeze, build repeatable controls and automate the boring. “Responsible AI governance is universal” should be true; write it down and live it.

For everyone else, it’ll be more of the same - busyness, reactivity, and the endless heroics that make you look busy while you fall behind. 

Final Word

2025 rewarded ownership, low‑tech leverage, and ROI fluency.  It answered lots of questions about why some in-house leaders are successful at brokering change and others are not. 

If things aren’t certain where you are - if headcount is frozen and cost‑cutting is the season  - you might not be ready to embrace change. Or you might try and stumble. That’s okay - there’s still plenty of corporate cover in 2026.

2026 won’t be the year your feet are held to the flame. You’ll be okay - just overworked from doing too much, not smart enough. It’s not a moral failing. It’s a choice. And choices compound. You likely won’t find your in-house career any more satisfying than you currently do.

But for those that volunteer to get after legal team transformation - 2026  is looking good – in fact it is looking amazing. 2026 will reward leaders who compose operations, treat data as a discipline, and use AI where it actually works. You will shine – as most in-house leaders will struggle to change gears. 

That’s the wrap on 2025 and the set‑up for 2026.  So – as you enjoy your break – just ask – are you “in” or are you “out” – as no one can force you to do anything. 

The reality is that you don’t need a revolution to turn your team into a performance machine. You need weekly habits that ship small, compounding wins. That’s how you win without waiting for permission.  And the trajectory of your career will change like you would not believe.

Oh – and it won’t hurt if we are working together! We would like that – but only if you want to embrace change. 

See you in 2026!