General Counsels, and their in-house legal teams, are often poorly understood by the rest of their businesses.

Yet, their role is hugely important and highly complex. Dealing with different issues each day, in-house legal teams must wear many hats and become trusted advisers to colleagues from graduates to the C-suite.

Critically, General Counsels must drive value for the business and be seen to be doing so.

Yet it can be difficult to quantify – particularly when timely advice has narrowly averted disaster. How can you measure something that didn’t happen?

With an increasingly uncertain economic outlook and every business assessing its costs, delivering and demonstrating value has never been more important for in-house legal teams.

As the Financial Times put it in an article earlier this year entitled ‘In-house lawyers are stepping out of the shadows’ “Company legal teams are out to prove their worth” - but how can they do it effectively?

LexisNexis has been working on addressing precisely this challenge. First, it’s important to look at the myriad challenges faced by in-house teams.

As well as their role as providing legal counsel on a wide variety of matters – from contract negotiation to crisis management – General Counsels are business partners, who provide invaluable strategic advice to help a business achieve its goals.

Despite this, they are often viewed as cost centres. This can be exacerbated by the requirements for ongoing learning and development, which are critical to staying current and delivering the best advice but requires investment.

The role of the in-house lawyer is continually evolving, and they must work hard to adapt to an everchanging business and economic climate. LexisNexis’ recent survey ‘The Tech-Enabled Lawyer’ found 55% of respondents agreed that the level of specialist knowledge required from in-house lawyers is akin to what you’d expect to find at a traditional law firm.

As well as advising on purely legal issues, the role of in-house counsel increasingly involves compliance, risk management and governance. They manage a high volume of complex work but can easily get bogged down in low value routine work.

Like any leader of a business unit, General Counsels must always be looking at ways to optimise productivity, minimise costs and keep the business moving forward. However, unlike counterparts in different departments, General Counsels often move in-house after working at a legal firm where there may be little training or no training around managing a business unit. Our survey revealed that 63% of teams had given legal operations no attention whatsoever and 59% of in-house legal teams listed lack of time as a key barrier to digital transformation.

These challenges can prevent General Counsels doing what they moved in-house to do; high level strategic work that delivers real value for their business.

That’s why, working with in-house legal teams, LexisNexis developed Practical Guidance In-House Advisor, a digital platform that provides immediate guidance on managing complex legal issues and improving operational performance.

The tool arms in-house lawyers with key business skills and the tools to demonstrate the commercial importance of their function.

When speaking to in-house lawyers to develop the tool, LexisNexis found that proving their worth was one of the biggest issues they faced, and many had developed systems and processes to demonstrate their value.

To give an example, it will be easier for an in-house legal department to demonstrate that it makes financial and prudential sense to maintain in-house legal capacity, if it is clearly structured with a defined strategy and system; carefully manages its relationships with the non-legal functions of the business; and is able to accurately report both on its performance and the value it contributes to the organisation.

“General counsels and in-house legal teams for the first time have access to a digital platform that provides immediate guidance on managing complex legal issues and improving operational performance.” Says Katherine Llewellyn, Executive Director Practical Guidance.

The need for reporting, insights and data is also reflected in the finding that 84% of respondents to ‘The ‘Tech-Enabled Lawyer’ survey said legal technology must have the ability to surface data insights in the next three to five years.

This will be increasingly important as the complexity of the in-house legal team’s role is only set to grow in the coming years. Almost two-thirds (62%) of respondents to the survey said they agreed or strongly agreed that in-house legal teams will continue to grow as more and more work takes place in-house.

While the complexity of the role will continue, tech solutions like Practical Guidance In-House Advisor can help General Counsels and their teams proactively deliver even more value to their businesses and, just as importantly, ensure they have tools to demonstrate that value too.