Rethinking Legal as a Corporate Asset: The CEO's Case for Legal Operations

Most in-house legal teams are doing more than they were designed to do, with the resources allocated when their mandate was narrower. The legal team is not the problem. The organizational design is. This article makes the case for rethinking legal operations as a corporate governance investment rather than a departmental efficiency program. It examines why the cost centre model undervalues legal's contribution, why the risk-aversion dynamic is structural rather than personal, and why the higher value tasks most organizations promise their lawyers will never materialize without a corresponding change in mandate and organizational position. Corporate-level legal operations — covering contract governance infrastructure, compliance coordination, legal resourcing, and board-level risk reporting — requires decisions that only the CEO can make. The General Counsel can build the argument. Only the CEO can give it the organizational weight it needs to succeed.