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One general counsel has warned there may be risks inherent with the boundaries of strategic business collaboration from the law department could be stretched too far away from traditional legal advice.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Corporate Counsel Show, Somerset Hoy, general counsel – deputy secretary, strategic services and advice at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, warned that as in-house lawyers increasingly position themselves as strategic business collaborators, the trend may have pushed the boundaries too far.
In the same episode, she stressed that in-house legal teams must evolve into commercially savvy, business-facing partners to meet the demands of today’s fast-changing environment.
Reflecting on the role’s evolution, Hoy cautioned that the shift resembles a pendulum swing, with the legal function drifting too far in one direction before an inevitable correction takes hold — and even that rebound, she warned, risks overshooting the mark.
“I do think in life a lot of things are a bit like a pendulum. You find yourself moving a little bit too far in one direction, and inevitably, then there is a correction, and then that correction will overcorrect,” she stated.
“I think about that with [in-house lawyers] morphing into business partners and away from the protections that come with legal advice in that sense”.
Looking ahead, Hoy suggested that within the next five years, organisations may face the unintended consequences of this shift, making a course correction unavoidable.
“I do wonder if in the next five or so years we will find that we have gone too far and there is something of a course correction,” she noted.
Hoy said the government’s handling of the Robodebt inquiry stands as a stark warning of what can unfold when legal advice is sidelined or ignored, cautioning that unless its lessons are genuinely absorbed and embedded, history risks repeating itself.
“In the government context, the Robodebt inquiry was a really confronting reckoning around what the role of a lawyer is internally. What do you do when people aren't listening to your advice?” she said.
“I don't feel like the lessons from that have been fully taken in and embedded and we may end up with something similar to that happening again, which does cause everyone to go, maybe we've gone too far.”
Having long embraced the business partnering model herself, Hoy described the idea of a potential correction as an “uncomfortable reality”, yet one she viewed as something that “maybe will happen”.
While this presents a significant challenge for in-house legal teams, Hoy also reflected on the heavy influence of economic pressures, noting how such forces inevitably shape legal departments and push them to do more with less.
“I think the other inevitable challenge is that economic environments have a very heavy influence on most law departments and most legal teams, as we talked about a couple of years ago, trying to do more with less. But you have to have the appetite for that,” she outlined.
Alongside this, she highlighted both the promise and the built-in limitations of technology in modern legal departments, cautioning that securing investment and budget remains a perennial challenge — one she doesn’t expect to fade anytime soon.
“I'm finding that at the moment, right now, I would love to be able to implement some AI solutions in a number of different ways. You have to have the investment in that to be able to do it and for it to bear fruit,” she stated.
“As the law department, you're not very often front of mind when people have the budget to spend on AI. So those challenges are perennial, but I don't think they're going away anytime soon.”
