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The Corporate Counsel Show: Legal teams are no longer the ‘Department of No’

In the current climate, law departments should have established themselves as more strategic and business-facing and should no longer be pure legal gatekeepers. Continuing on that trajectory, and ensuring the team can balance all competing priorities, is a foremost challenge for GCs and their teams in 2026 and beyond.

January 21, 2026 By Robyn Tongol
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In this episode of The Corporate Counsel Show, host Jerome Doraisamy welcomes back Somerset Hoy, general counsel – deputy secretary, strategic services and advice at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, about what she likes about legal work in the public service, how all law departments should already have transitioned to becoming more business-facing and less legal-focused, why the in-house legal team is no longer the “Department of No”, and the questions teams must be asking of themselves in how to continue that transition in 2026.

 
 

Hoy also discusses resolving the conflict between keeping more work in-house versus moving away from being a legal gatekeeper for a business, making the time to balance all duties, challenges standing in the way of legal teams moving away from gatekeeping, becoming all things to all teams within a business, the role of a GC in bringing their team along for the journey, and what the law department of 2030 could look like.

Plus, in case you missed them, check out these recent episodes of The Corporate Counsel Show: