I was recently interviewed by LawVu Legal Leaders[1] for an article on the future of the legal department. In that article, I mention that it is time for legal departments to stop being the brake and start being the gas pedal. I have had a number of requests to expand on what I meant by that statement. And that is what I intended to do today. For most of my in-house legal career, legal departments have been defined by problems avoided, legal issues raised, disputes resolved, risks not taken, and so on. Don’t get me wrong. All of this matters, and it always will. The legal department’s obligation to protect the business and act as a “watchdog” is fundamental. But something has changed in terms of expectations for the legal department. Businesses today move faster, operate in hyper-complex environments, and face greater pressure than ever to drive revenue. Everything is moving faster. It’s exhausting just to write it down, let alone live it. And in this emerging environment, the legal team cannot afford to be defined solely as the function that identifies risk after the business has developed a plan. It must be part of the process to develop the plan from ground zero, to help the business create value (not just protect it), to deliver results “that matter.”

This does not mean in-house counsel should say “yes” to everything the business tosses over the transom (though that would make you very popular). And it certainly does not mean ignoring risk management. It means the legal department will (and must) be measured not only by what it prevents, but – more importantly – by what it enables. The best legal departments are evolving from reactive “command and control” functions into acceleration engines. They are proactively looking for ways to make it easier to work with legal, to help business leaders reach decisions faster, to build legal systems and processes that scale, and become trusted partners with a seat at the table where the conversations that drive the business forward happen. In other words, it is time to stop thinking about the legal department as the brake, and find ways to become the gas pedal. This edition of “Ten Things” takes on the challenge of describing how in-house counsel can do this:

1. Define the legal department’s mission in business terms. The first step is for the legal department to define its purpose in terms of business outcomes. Managing legal risk, ensuring compliance, negotiating contracts, managing disputes, overseeing governance, and advising executive leadership are all important, but they describe what legal does, not why it matters to the business. Other than law firms, no business exists to simply manage legal matters. Companies exist to create value for customers, employees, and investors. The legal department’s role should be framed in terms of how it helps the business produce that value. That may mean helping the company enter a new market. It may mean helping leadership make a difficult decision with a clear understanding of risks, options, and trade-offs (both legal and business).

The distinction matters. When the legal department describes itself primarily as a risk-management function, it becomes a “cost” of doing business. When it describes itself as an enabler of business growth, better decisions, and faster execution, it becomes an integral part of the business. A business-oriented legal function is more effective because it can frame legal considerations in the context of business priorities. In other words, help the business achieve its objectives with an acceptable degree of risk. This begins with understanding what the business is trying to accomplish. In-house counsel should regularly ask the business:

  • What are the organization’s most important strategic priorities?
  • Where is growth expected to come from?
  • What initiatives have the greatest operational or commercial urgency?
  • Where are decisions consistently delayed?
  • Which business or legal processes create the most friction?
  • What can the legal department do to materially improve speed, clarity, or confidence for business leaders?

The answers should inform your priorities, staffing, metrics/KPIs, legal process design, and how you communicate with the business. When the legal department truly understands the business model and strategy, it can move from just responding to legal issues to helping shape business solutions. This is step one to becoming a gas pedal.

2. Measure impact (not just activity). Legal departments have traditionally relied on operational metrics because they are easy to collect. How many contracts were reviewed? How many matters were opened or closed? What was the outside counsel spend? How many policies were updated? These metrics have value. A legal department should understand how much work it is doing and where its resources are being deployed. But activity is not impact. A high volume of contract reviews may indicate that legal is busy, but it does not reveal whether deals are moving quickly or slowly. A fast response time may be helpful, but was the advice actionable and did it enable a decision? The more important measure is whether legal’s work contributed to an outcome that matters to the business. For example:

  • Did legal help shorten the sales cycle?
  • Did it improve the speed of vendor onboarding?
  • Did it help a new product reach market without avoidable delay?
  • Did it enable the company to make a faster and more informed investment decision?
  • Did it reduce the volume of repetitive issues by building a better process?

The business does not really care how many contracts the legal department reviews. It cares how quickly the deals get done. Do not confuse the two. This revelation reshapes how legal should think about measurement. To step on the gas, you need to identify a handful of metrics that connect legal work to business performance. Such as:

  • Cycle time for revenue-generating agreements.
  • Time from legal intake to deal signed.
  • Time to launch a new product or service.
  • Percentage of routine requests handled through self-service.
  • Reduction in contract exceptions or escalations
  • Cost savings or revenue acceleration linked to process improvements.
  • Percentage of matters resolved through standardized templates or workflows.

The point here is to find ways to connect legal’s work to the outcomes that business leaders care about. When legal can demonstrate that it is enabling growth, reducing friction, and supporting better decisions on things that matter to the business, it earns greater influence. Influence is gasoline!

3. Make “Time to Yes” a KPI. One critical way the legal department can demonstrate its contribution to business performance is through a concept I call “time to yes.” Time to yes is pretty straightforward: how long does it take the legal department to help the business reach a workable, informed decision? This is not a measure of turnaround time. It is not about how quickly a lawyer replies to an email or how many days it takes to review a document. It is about the end-to-end time required for legal and the business to identify a viable path forward. Many legal teams can respond quickly while still leaving the business uncertain about what it should do next. Time to yes measures something more meaningful: Is legal helping the business move from uncertainty to action? A prolonged time to yes can have real consequences. A delayed commercial agreement can postpone revenue. A slow legal review can hold up a product launch. Over time, delays like these can reinforce the perception that legal is “an obstacle” to overcome. Reducing time to yes, however, does not mean lowering standards. It means:

  • Creating a clearer path/framework for decisions.
  • Distinguishing between high-risk matters that require careful analysis and routine matters that can be addressed more quickly (i.e., good enough is good enough).
  • Providing practical alternatives instead of just a list of problems.
  • Making sure the right people are involved at the right time.
  • Giving business teams clear answers that allow them to proceed with confidence.

Begin by examining where decisions become stuck. Are requests coming too late in the process? Is legal receiving incomplete information? Are routine matters being treated as bespoke matters? Are lawyers spending time on tasks that could be automated or handled through a checklist or playbook? The problem is usually not lawyer productivity. It is process design. Time to yes creates a shared objective between legal and the business. Both sides have an interest in reaching good decisions quickly. The objective is not speed for its own sake. It is the ability to reach the right answer, at the right level of risk, in time for the business to act.

4. Less friction and more practical solutions. One important mindset shift for the legal team is moving from identifying obstacles and problems to offering solutions. Legal departments are trained to spot issues. That is a core professional skill, and lawyers are really good at it. But the ability to identify a problem is not the same as the ability to help solve it. When lawyers lead with a list of problems (which is common), business leaders hear “no.” A business leader who is told here are the available alternatives, the risks of each option (legal and business), and the recommended path forward feels empowered to make a decision and get going. This is the difference between legal as the brake and legal as the gas pedal. For example, rather than saying that a proposed contract term is unacceptable (and stopping there), in-house counsel should explain the commercial and legal concerns, identify fallback/alternative language, establish the circumstances under which an exception could be approved, and clarify who has authority to make the final call. This is not just a better client experience. It is a more effective form of legal counsel. The business needs to hear about risk, but it also needs its legal team to be constructive. Consider doing the following: 

  • First, understand the business objective. Without context, you may provide technically correct but commercially unhelpful advice.
  • Second, develop a screaming hot bias toward options. In many cases, there is more than one way to achieve a legitimate business objective. Identify the options, explain the implications, and recommend the appropriate course.
  • Third, communicate with clarity. The business should leave a legal conversation knowing what can proceed, what must change, what requires escalation, and what risk remains.

5. Get involved earlier. To be the gas pedal, you must find ways to engage early enough to shape the initiative, not just wait around to review it at the end of the process.  Too often, (and usually not due to actions of the legal team) in-house lawyers become involved after the business team has selected a strategy, negotiated key terms, designed a product, committed budget, or communicated expectations to stakeholders. At that point, legal is usually asked to “sign off” on a decision that is already largely formed.  And we all know what that is like. Late legal involvement creates rework. It increases frustration (on both sides). It can make the legal department (unfairly) appear obstructive because the lawyer is identifying issues after the business has already invested time and effort in a particular approach. Most importantly, it reduces your ability to help develop alternatives, because available options may now be unavailable due to choices the business has already made. The goal then is to find ways to change this dynamic and get the legal team involved early in the process.  Here are five ideas:

  • Embed legal in strategic planning meetings. Include someone from legal in annual planning, product roadmaps, market-entry discussions, and major commercial strategy meetings. This gives the department visibility before decisions harden into commitments.
  • Create a legal intake “trigger” for high-impact initiatives. Work with the business to establish simple criteria for when early lawyer involvement is needed, e.g., new products, new markets, significant partnerships, major data uses, nonstandard pricing, or material customer commitments.
  • Participate in deal review and product governance. Put the legal team directly into any recurring meetings where commercial terms, product features, customer commitments, and launch decisions are reviewed. Legal becomes part of the decision workflow rather than a final approval step.
  • Build relationships with business leaders before issues arise. The importance of relationships cannot be repeated enough. Get off your ass and out from behind the keyboard and go talk to the business. Assign lawyers to key business units and expect regular informal contact with sales, product, finance, HR, and operations leaders. Early involvement often comes from trust and familiarity (i.e., they want you there), not a written policy.
  • Make engaging with legal early easier than engaging late. Offer short office hours, quick preliminary consultations, structured intake forms, and clear guidance on when to involve legal. Make your department website easy to navigate and full of useful information. Business teams are more likely to seek legal input early when doing so is simple, fast, and constructive.

6. Communicate like a business person. Legal advice can be technically accurate yet wildly ineffective. The problem is not the legal analysis. It is the communication. Business leaders do not need/want legal teams to repeat statutes, summarize case law, write footnotes, or provide a lengthy list of possible risks. It’s not the answer to a law school exam question; it is a business communication. Write like a business person. The reader just needs to understand what the legal issue means for the business decision in front of them. In other words, things like:

  • What is the risk?
  • How likely is it to matter?
  • What is the potential impact?
  • What are the alternatives?
  • What do you recommend?
  • Who needs to decide?
  • What happens if we proceed?
  • What happens if we delay?

The best in-house lawyers communicate simply, with precision, and with context. They understand that a business decision may involve timing, customer commitments, competitive pressure, cost, feasibility, and strategic importance. Legal risk is only part of the equation. Business leaders need to evaluate the entire picture, not just your list of legal concerns. In-house counsel communication should help leadership make an informed decision based on a complete understanding of the trade-offs. This is particularly true given that legal answers are rarely a simple yes or no. There may be a range of possible approaches, each with a different level of risk and business benefit. Do not fear such complexity, lean into it and try to make it manageable for the business:

  • State the business objective.
  • Identify the key legal or regulatory issue.
  • Explain the relevant risk in plain language.
  • Present the available options.
  • Describe the trade-offs associated with each option.
  • Recommend a path forward.
  • Identify any required approvals or next steps.

If you are only communicating with prohibitions, disclaimers, and caveats, the business sees you as someone without a clue about commercial realities (i.e., a brake). A lawyer who explains risk clearly, recommends practical solutions, and understands the urgency of the business earns credibility and trust (i.e., becomes the gas pedal).

7. Scale through disengagement. In my book, Showing the Value of the Legal Department: Not Just A Cost Center, I spend a lot of time discussing the value of disengagement. That is, adding value by getting the hell out of the way. The business does not revolve around the legal department, so stop acting like you must be part of every decision that remotely touches on a legal issue. One of the easiest and most efficient ways to do this (and scale routine work) is to create self-service tools for the business. Instead of leading with “we need more lawyers,” consider leading with “how can we help the business do more things for themselves?” You already know that a large portion of legal work is repeatable, i.e., it involves common agreements, standard requests, routine approvals, recurring policy questions, and other familiar business scenarios. Treating every matter as a bespoke legal assignment is inefficient and unnecessary. “Self-service” is one of the most effective ways to scale legal’s impact. It does not mean abandoning oversight. It does not mean allowing business teams to make high-risk legal decisions without appropriate legal guidance. It means simply giving business teams the tools, templates, workflows, and guardrails they need to handle routine, low-risk matters independently and consistently. This includes:

  • Standardized contract templates for common transactions.
  • Automated approval workflows.
  • Clause libraries and fallback positions.
  • Playbooks for recurring commercial or operational issues.
  • Decision trees for routine questions.
  • Standardized intake forms that capture the information legal needs.
  • FAQs and knowledge resources.
  • Preapproved policies and compliance checklists.
  • Training that equips business teams to recognize when escalation is necessary.

Done right, self-service reduces bottlenecks, improves consistency, and shortens time to yes (remember that metric?). It also improves the experience of the business. Instead of waiting for legal to answer a routine question, a business team can access approved guidance and proceed within defined guardrails. Instead of negotiating routine terms from scratch, a sales or procurement team can use a standard template with clear escalation thresholds. Instead of sending incomplete requests to legal, stakeholders can use a well-designed intake process that routes matters efficiently. For the legal department, the benefit is not just less work. Lawyers can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on complex negotiations, strategic decisions, emerging risks, high-value transactions, and matters where their expertise is indispensable. Disengagement is integral to becoming the gas pedal.

8. Restructure the department. Damn. That is a big one to save for so late in the blog, isn’t it? But hey, I am just working off my notes and this one was No. 8, so we will have to deal with it here. For most of my career, the legal department has sat separately, all together, and away from the business, often hidden in a dark corner or deep in the basement. That does not really work anymore. A modern legal function needs a structure that balances proximity, specialization, and scale. No single structure works for every legal team, but many legal departments are moving toward a hybrid model that combines three elements: embedded lawyers, centralized expertise, and technology-enabled systems. Embedded lawyers work closely with specific business units or functional leaders. They become experts in that part of the business, understand the commercial environment, participate in planning discussions, and provide advice in real time that reflects the realities of the business. Their value comes from proximity and trust. Centralized teams (or centers of excellence) provide depth in specialized areas such as employment law, privacy, intellectual property, litigation, etc. Their value comes from consistency, quality, and efficiency. Technology and self-service tools handle high-volume, repeatable work. These systems include contract-management tools, knowledge-management resources, automated intake, template libraries, artificial intelligence, and decision-support tools. Their value comes from speed and scalability.

The hybrid model is effective because it recognizes that legal work is not all the same, e.g., routine legal work should not consume the same level of legal attention as a complex strategic decision. A well-designed structure helps legal allocate its resources intentionally. Moreover, a hybrid structure allows knowledge to be captured, responsibilities distributed, and work to flow more effectively and efficiently. This reduces the department’s vulnerability to turnover, overload, and inconsistent decision-making.

9. Build a culture of risk-takers. For the legal team to truly morph into the gas pedal, it must help the business become better at taking risks – not better at avoiding them. Every meaningful business decision involves some degree of uncertainty. Entering a new market, launching a product, negotiating a major customer agreement, adopting new technology, changing a pricing model, or pursuing a strategic partnership all involve risk and trade-offs. That said, a business that does not take risks is dead in the water. This means the real question when it comes to risk is whether the potential value justifies the risk and whether the business can manage the risk intelligently. This is where the legal department can truly excel. We all know that legal is often viewed as the function responsible for identifying risk and stopping the business from taking it. This is not an unfair statement because many lawyers are trained to stamp out as much risk as possible (like Smokey the Bear on amphetamines). This needs to change. The legal department should help the business distinguish between unacceptable risk, manageable risk, and risk worth taking in pursuit of a meaningful business opportunity. The goal is not to make every decision “safe.” In many cases, the safest decision is also the least competitive and least valuable to the business. Instead, the goal is to ensure the business takes risk deliberately, with a clear understanding of the consequences and tradeoffs (and with appropriate safeguards in place if needed).

This requires in-house lawyers to unlearn a lot of bad habits. Not every issue should require senior-level approval. Not every deviation from a standard contract term should be treated as a major legal event. Not every unfamiliar question should result in a delay while the organization seeks 1000% complete certainty. A legally defensible decision may still suck commercially. Conversely, a decision that carries some legal risk may be appropriate if the business opportunity is significant, the risk is understood (and the company has a plan to mitigate it). This means the legal department must learn to embrace risk and work with the business to jointly create a workable framework to deal with it. Something like:

  • Which risks are unacceptable and require a firm no?
  • Which risks are manageable within defined parameters?
  • Which decisions can be made by business leaders without legal escalation?
  • Which issues require specialist legal (outside counsel) input?
  • Which matters require executive-level review?
  • What information do decision-makers need before proceeding?
  • How exceptions should be documented and monitored?

Agreeing on a framework with the business allows it to move faster because people know where they have authority to act (and legal can focus its attention where the stakes are highest). Likewise, a framework allows for more flexibility – rather than offering a binary yes or no answer, in-house lawyers outline the available options, explain the associated legal and business risks, identify mitigation steps, and recommend a path forward. For example, “We can launch this product feature if we make these changes to consent, data retention, and user disclosures.” Or, “We can enter this market if we address these regulatory requirements before the next phase of expansion.”

All this hinges on developing lawyers who are not afraid of risk and understand that the goal cannot be zero risk. The goal is responsible, informed, and value-creating risk-taking. Unleash the kraken! Embracing risk is one of the clearest ways the legal department can become the gas pedal of the business.

10. Change how the business experiences legal services. Ultimately, the legal department becomes the gas pedal of the business when the business experiences it that way. This is not about changing labels, publishing a new mission statement, or asking stakeholders to “think” of legal more favorably. Perception changes when behavior changes. For legal to become a true business accelerator, it must become easier for the business to use. Too often, internal clients experience in-house legal services as grumpy, difficult to access, slow to respond, unclear about priorities, poor communicators, and overly focused on legal bullshit. A salesperson may not know whether a contract issue needs legal review. A product leader may be uncertain when to involve privacy counsel. A manager may send an email to a general inbox and wait without knowing who owns the request or when to expect an answer. Experiences like this create friction and act as a brake on getting things done. And they encourage poor behavior by the business, i.e., business teams delay involving legal, work around established processes, or escalate routine issues unnecessarily because they do not have a clear path to resolution. A customer-friendly legal department starts with this basic premise: internal clients should receive legal support in a way that is clear, practical, timely, and proportionate to the issue. This means:

  • Make legal services easy to access. Business teams should know where to go for legal support, what information to provide, and what will happen after they submit a request. Do not force internal clients to navigate a complicated process simply to find the right lawyer. Something as mundane as a clear intake process can make a meaningful difference.
  • Set clear expectations about service.  A customer-friendly legal department is predictable. Business teams should understand which types of matters can be handled quickly, which require more detailed analysis, and when they should expect an update. Legal does not need to operate like a call center, but it should establish reasonable service expectations for common categories of work. This also means the lawyers in the department need to know what is expected of them as well. A business stakeholder is more likely to view legal as responsive when they know that their request has been received, understand who owns it, and have a realistic expectation of when they will hear back.
  • Communicate in a clear, straightforward, business-oriented manner. Customer-friendly legal service also depends on good communication. The business should not have to decipher a dense legal memo to understand what they can do next. Legal advice should be accurate, but it should also be practical. A useful response includes:
    • The key issue in plain language.
    • The level of risk involved.
    • The business impact of that risk.
    • Available options.
    • A recommended course of action.
    • Any approvals or escalation required.
    • The next step and the person responsible.
  • Focus on solutions, not the problems. Business teams are more likely to seek legal input early when they believe legal will help them find a way forward. That requires a mental shift from simply identifying legal obstacles to providing practical options and finding ways to “yes.” When a proposed course of action creates risk, legal should explain the concern and, where possible, offer alternatives that preserve the business objective. Instead of saying that a customer’s requested contract term is crappy and unacceptable (and it may well be), identify acceptable fallback positions and, if needed, explain which deviations require higher-level approval.
  • Ask for feedback and use it to improve the experience. Legal departments should treat internal clients as customers whose experience provides useful operational data. Legal should periodically ask business teams where legal can improve. Are requests difficult to submit? Are templates too complicated? Are certain approvals slowing deals? Do business teams know when to involve legal? Are lawyers providing advice in time to affect the decision? This feedback should lead to practical improvements.

*****

There is a lot here to digest (sorry about that). Fortunately, not everything has to happen immediately. Look for the low-hanging fruit and start with things that are easy to do and/or show immediate results. Just know that the future of the legal department will not be defined by how many problems it can spot. The new differentiator is value, i.e., the ability to demonstrate how the legal department contributes to outcomes that matter to the business. Legal teams will not be judged by what they stopped (even though that remains important). Instead, they will be judged by what they made possible. It starts with the entire legal team buying into the fact that today is the day to take the foot off the brake and stomp the gas!

Sterling Miller

June 30, 2026

Want to know more? My book, Showing the Value of the Legal Department: More Than Just a Cost Center is available now (in the ABA bookstore and on Amazon).  You can buy a copy HERE and be oozing in value in just a few days!

My book The Productive In-House Lawyer: Tips, Hacks, and the Art of Getting Things Done is a great companion piece.  You can buy it here: Buy The Book!

My newest book (number seven), More Slow-Cooker Savant, is out!  Join the cool kids and buy a copy right now!

Two of my books, Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel – Practical Advice and Successful Strategies and Ten (More) Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel – Practical Advice and Successful Strategies Volume 2, are also on sale at the ABA website (including as e-books).

I have published two other books: The Evolution of Professional Football and The Slow-Cooker Savant.  I am also available for speaking engagements, webinars/CLEs, coaching, training, pet sitting, bartending, and consulting.

Connect with me on Twitter @10ThingsLegal and on LinkedIn, where I post articles and stories of interest to in-house counsel frequently.

“Ten Things” is not legal advice nor legal opinion and represents my views only. It is intended to provide practical tips and references to the busy in-house practitioner and other readers. If you have questions or comments, or ideas for a post, please contact me at sterling.miller@outlook.com or if you would like a CLE for your in-house legal team on this or any topic in the blog, contact me at smiller@hilgerslaw.com.

[1] LawVu provides lots of great free content for in-house lawyers. Check it out!